Many teens in the new study who said they’d recently used e-cigarettes had never smoked traditional cigarettes, the researchers found.
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California has among the lowest rates of adolescent use of tobacco cigarettes in the U.S., so other states may have fewer adolescent vapers who have never smoked tobacco.
The scientists also found that most of the teenagers who used e-cigarettes had family members and friends who used them. One-third of e-cigarette users also smoked tobacco cigarettes, versus 1 percent of kids who’d never vaped. “So that’s a very strong finding”.
“There is concern by the public health community that e-cigarettes may be recruiting a whole new group of users, independent of those who were smoking cigarettes, and our data support this”, Barrington-Trimis said.
On E-cigarette Facts, one user says that “E-cigarettes may be less harmful than cigarettes, But we still don’t know enough about their long-term risks or the effects of secondhand exposure.” according to report.
“Our findings really suggest there’s a lot of kids who are using these e-cigarettes”, Barrington-Trimis said.
“In addition, continued research into factors that lead to e-cigarette use, as well as studies examining the individual and population-level implications of high rates of e-cigarette use in adolescent populations are needed”, she concluded.
However, he also said the consequences of that experimentation are not clear.
“It’s unfortunate that despite collecting information on how many days of the month respondents had used vapor products, the authors did not see fit to disclose that data and weigh it against the smoking patterns of those students”, Conley said.
Joy Friedman, MD, section head of adolescent pediatrics at Beaumont Health System in Royal Oak, Mich., said these results suggest e-cigarettes may be more socially acceptable to teenagers compared with the response she has received from her patients about traditional cigarettes.
The study also underscored the importance of a teen’s environment in use of e-cigarettes: 34 percent of teens who use e-cigarettes have another e-cigarette user at home or among their friends.
“We found that, collectively, these factors that indicate a positive social environment mean that e-cigarettes are becoming more normalized”,
Barrington-Trimis said. “These products are designed to help smokers break their addiction to smoking by providing a much safer way of obtaining nicotine”.
The study, published online July 27 in the journal Pediatrics, comes on the heels of a federal report showing that e-cigarettes are soaring in popularity. But the new study suggests some teens picking up e-cigarettes belong to a unique group.
Siegel agrees it is important for teens to be aware of the possible health risks of nicotine but found another aspect of the study striking as well. “Or, e-cigarettes may lead to the normalization of smoking behaviors and that’s the normalization that we’re concerned with”.
“E-cigarettes often contain nicotine, so they may induce sort of a psychological dependency on nicotine and then may lead to future cigarette use”, Barrington-Trimis explained. “The greater concern”, Rees said, “is the potential for tobacco manufacturers to target young adult e-cigarette consumers – who may be vulnerable to tobacco-industry messaging because of their dependence on nicotine”.
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Meanwhile, Barrington-Trimis recommends that parents limit teens’ access to e-cigarettes and talk with their children about whether their friends are using e-cigarettes.
