Comparison of the Smoking Cessation of Heated Tobacco Product Users and Conventional Cigarette Smokers in Korea

BACKGROUND: Since the introduction of heated tobacco products (HTPs) in Korea in 2017, their annual sales have increased. Several studies have investigated the perceptions of HTPs and smoking cessation behaviors. For the first time, In 2019, questions focused on HTP use were introduced in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHNES). This study aimed to compare smoking cessation behaviors between HTP users and conventional cigarette smokers using KNHANES data. METHODS: Data of 947 current adult smokers from the 8th KNHNES (2019) were analyzed. Current smokers were divided into conventional cigarette (CC)–only, HTP-only, and dual-use groups. The general characteristics of the three groups were investigated. Differences in current intention to quit smoking and past attempts to quit smoking among the three groups were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression analysis by IBM SPSS ver. 25.0. RESULTS: HTP-only users demonstrated fewer future smoking cessation plans (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.398; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.195–0.813; P=0.012) and fewer smoking cessation attempts in the past year (AOR, 0.533; 95% CI, 0.298–0.954; P=0.034) than CC-only smokers. However, there was no significant difference between dual-use (CC+HTP) and CC-only smokers. CONCLUSION: While dual-use and CC-only smokers showed similar smoking cessation behaviors, HTP-only users had fewer previous attempts to quit smoking and were less likely to be currently ready to quit smoking. These findings can be explained by a decrease in the need to quit smoking due to the convenience of HTP and the perception that HTPs are less harmful than CC.