|
The researchers wondered whether e-cigarettes are recruiting youth
who otherwise would never have smoked. The answer seems to be yes,
said Dr. Jessica L. Barrington-Trimis from University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
“E-cigarettes are recruiting at least some youth who likely would
never have smoked combustible cigarettes,” she told Reuters Health
by email.
Her team looked at current cigarette use by 11th and 12th graders in
southern California between 1995 and 2014.
The percentage of 12th-graders who said they were currently smoking
fell from 19.1 percent in 1995 to 14.7 percent in 2001 and to 7.8
percent by 2014. But the combined use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes
added up to 13.7 percent in 2014, which was similar to the number of
current smokers in 2001.
Nearly a third of 12th graders admitted in 2014 that they had used
cigarettes or e-cigarettes at least once. This was much higher than
the 20.4 percent in 2004 and slightly higher than the 30.2 percent
in 2001.
The patterns were similar for 11th graders and for males and
females, the researchers noted in Pediatrics.
Current smoking rates were consistently higher among white
adolescents than among Hispanic adolescents, although similar
numbers admitted to having ever tried cigarettes or e-cigarettes.
“The high combined prevalence of e-cigarette use or cigarette use in
2014, compared with historical Southern California smoking
prevalence, suggests that adolescents are not merely substituting
e-cigarettes for cigarettes but that e-cigarettes are instead
recruiting a new group of users who would not likely have initiated
combustible tobacco product use in the absence of e-cigarettes,
which poses a potential threat to the public health of adolescent
populations,” the researchers say.
With new regulations “beginning to take hold across the nation
raising the age of tobacco purchase (including e-cigarettes) to 21,
we might see some changes to adolescent use of e-cigarettes and
other tobacco products,” Barrington-Trimis said.
In a related commentary, Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff from
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Sarah E. Winickoff from
Brookline Public School, Brookline, Massachusetts suggested several
ways to address rising e-cigarette use by adolescents.
[to top of second column] |
“We tried to focus on several practical solutions that can be
implemented right now,” Winickoff told Reuters Health. “Educational
approaches should be implemented in schools and clinical settings to
counter tobacco industry advertising messages.”
“Parents should have conversations with their kids about the dangers
of e-cigarettes and express their strong disapproval of these
devices and the harmful aerosols they contain,” Winickoff concluded.
“Tests show that even when the e-cigarette device is labeled no
nicotine or zero nicotine, nicotine is often present.”
“These devices are becoming better at delivering fine particles and
nicotine into the blood stream,” he added. “The tobacco industry is
working on making the e-cigarette as addictive as possible so that
more new users will graduate to lifelong tobacco product addicts. As
a pediatrician, I am extremely worried about the next generation
becoming addicted to tobacco products.”
Dr. Adam M. Lippert from University of Colorado’s sociology
department in Denver told Reuters Health by email that based on this
and other studies, “adolescent e-cigarette use increases the
likelihood of future conventional cigarette use—a troubling finding
that threatens to unravel the gains made over the past two decades
against teenage smoking.”
Efforts to teach teens about the risks associated with e-cigarettes
may help, he said.
“As was the case with conventional tobacco products, additional
taxation may also prove successful in preventing adolescent
e-cigarette use,” Lippert said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/29vnPbJ Pediatrics, online July 11, 2016
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
