Qualitative and Sensitivity Analysis of the Effect of Electronic Cigarettes on Smoking Cessation

Abstract

Recently, the role of the electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in a way to reduce smoking is increasing. E-cigarettes are a device that delivers only the nicotine, and its use is considered less harmful to health compared with tobacco cigarettes. Smokers frequently make use of e-cigarettes as one of the nonsmoking aid devices. In this work, we propose a mathematical model to analyze the effect of e-cigarettes on smoking cessation. The stability and the bifurcation of the model have been discussed. The parameter estimations from the observed data are drawn, and using the parameters, a reasonable smoking model has been designed. Moreover, by considering the sensitivity results depending on the basic reproduction numberR0, the effective strategies that reduce the smokers are investigated. Numerical simulations of the model show that e-cigarettes may somewhat diminish the numbers of smokers, but it does not reduce the number of quitters ultimately.