Nicotine vaping among adolescents and young adults has reached an urgent turning point: in 2024 it became the most commonly initiated drug, yet treatment options for young people who want to quit remain scarce. Complicating the picture, a 2022 Drug and Alcohol Dependence study found that roughly half of young people who vape nicotine also use cannabis — but until now, the impact of that dual use on quitting success was unclear.

A new clinical trial from Mass General Brigham offers encouraging news. In a study of 261 participants aged 16 to 25, researchers found that varenicline — a medication used to help people stop using nicotine — improved vaping cessation outcomes regardless of whether participants also used cannabis. The findings are published in JAMA Network Open.

“We need to increase use of nicotine vaping cessation treatment by young people, and we know that cannabis use is widespread in this population,” said first author Jodi Gilman, PhD, Director of Neuroscience for the Center for Addiction Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Psychiatry. “It’s fantastic news that cannabis use doesn’t appear to be a barrier to successful vaping cessation with varenicline treatment, and we can use our findings to inform screening, treatment, planning, and public health messaging moving forward.”

The results come from a randomized clinical trial in which regular nicotine vapers were assigned to receive varenicline, placebo, or usual care over a 12-week period. All participants also had access to a nicotine cessation support text app.

For this analysis, researchers grouped participants by past-month cannabis use: 28% reported no use, 38% used one to three days per week, and 30% used four to seven days per week. Contrary to the authors’ initial hypothesis, cannabis use did not reduce the likelihood of achieving nicotine vaping abstinence. Odds of quitting were similar across all levels of cannabis use, and varenicline was linked to higher rates of vaping abstinence than behavioral support alone. The medication did not change rates of cannabis use.

The authors suggest future research should evaluate integrated interventions that target both nicotine and cannabis co-use to see if combined approaches offer additional benefit.

This article was adapted from an original report published on news-medical.net. All rights belong to the original publisher.