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 “Perhaps if we are so good about communicating risks of cigarettes
but we don’t communicate about e-cigarettes, it sends a message that
they are safe,” said lead author Maria L. Roditis of the Center for
Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of
California, San Francisco.
“That’s not a message we want people to have,” Roditis told Reuters
Health.
She and her coauthor Bonnie Halpern-Felsher of Stanford University
gathered nine teenage girls and 15 teen boys from a school district
in Northern California with high rates of substance use. During six
group meetings lasting up to 75 minutes, Roditis led discussions
about what good or bad things might happen from using cigarettes,
e-cigarettes or marijuana. The participants were also asked where
and from whom they had learned about the products.
The teens also filled out questionnaires about their use of
cigarettes, e-cigarettes and marijuana as well as how easy it was to
access these products.
In general, the teens were aware of the dangers of cigarettes, and
had seen public health campaigns against smoking on TV. But they
were less sure about the risks of marijuana and e-cigarettes, and
seemed to feel they were less dangerous and carried more benefits,
like the stress relief and high from smoking pot or the “classy”
appearance of e-cigarettes, as reported in the Journal of Adolescent
Health.
Kids also said e-cigarettes might help you quit smoking regular
cigarettes.
They often pointed to the media, family, friends and the school
environment as information sources on these products.
E-cigarettes and marijuana are not the same as cigarettes, but they
do need similar public health messaging, especially targeted to kids
who may otherwise start using these products, Halpern-Felsher said.
“The issue is we’re not really putting the message out at all
really,” Roditis said. While the teens said they had seen
commercials about the dangers of cigarette smoke, the only
commercials they had seen about e-cigarettes were ones promoting
them, she noted.
California has begun a TV-based public health campaign about
e-cigarettes, but most places in the U.S. have not, she said.
“It’s important for us to lay out the myths and counter those
myths,” Halpern-Felsher told Reuters Health by phone.
For one thing, smoking an e-cigarette should not be called “vaping,”
because they do not contain water vapor, they contain aerosol, which
is not harmless, she said.
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Also, the available evidence suggests that e-cigarettes do not help
cigarette smokers quit, she said.
States considering legalizing recreational marijuana should consider
how to regulate the marketing and sale of these products to make
sure they do not target minors, Roditis said. E-cigarettes are
already on the market, and with at least 400 flavor varieties
available, their popularity has skyrocketed among teens.
“Now we’re trying to uncrack those eggs,” she said.
“It’s a really important paper because it really shows that the
level of ignorance that kids have about these products is leading to
a lot of use,” said Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for
Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF.
Glantz has worked with both authors in the past but was not involved
in the new research.
Since it can be a legal medical therapy, many people believe
marijuana smoke carries no harms, which is not true, he told Reuters
Health.
“The evidence base is smaller because it is illegal, it’s very hard
to do any research on it,” he said.
Marijuana smoke actually has worse effects on vascular function than
cigarette smoke in animal studies, and smoking pot, like
e-cigarettes, is often a gateway for young people to start smoking
cigarettes, he said.
For marijuana and e-cigarettes, “the right way to think about it is
like cigarettes,” Glantz said. “It shouldn’t be illegal, but people
shouldn’t be using them.”
“People need to know that these things are not harmless,” he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1GIJ1aA The Journal of Adolescent Health,
online June 23, 2015.
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