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 Researchers followed 10,000 nonsmokers ranging in age from 12 to 17
years old for one year to see how their use of other tobacco
products influenced the odds that they would become smokers.
By the end of that year, 469 youth, or about 5 percent, had tried a
cigarette and 219, or roughly 2 percent, had smoked within the past
month, the study found.
Among the small proportion of teens who had tried e-cigarettes at
the start of the study, however, 19 percent had become smokers a
year later, as had about 18 percent of hookah users.
“Each type of non-cigarette tobacco product we studied - whether
e-cigarettes, cigars, or smokeless tobacco - independently
contributed to smoking risk,” said senior study author Dr. Benjamin
Chaffee of the University of California, San Francisco School of
Dentistry.
“These products have different properties, but in terms of
predicting future smoking among kids, the risk seems to be the
same,” Chaffee said by email.
Vaping - a term for using e-cigarettes and similar devices - was the
most popular alternative to traditional cigarettes. About 4 percent
of teens had vaped at the start of the study, followed by 3 percent
who had smoked a hookah, or water pipe, researchers report in JAMA
Pediatrics.
Big tobacco companies, including Altria Group Inc, Lorillard Tobacco
Co and Reynolds American Inc, are all developing e-cigarettes. The
battery-powered devices feature a glowing tip and a heating element
that turns liquid nicotine and other flavorings into a cloud of
vapor that users inhale.
More than 2 million middle- and high-school students tried
e-cigarettes in 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention reported last year, making this the most popular form of
tobacco use among young people.
A steady rise in the proportion of adolescents using e-cigarettes in
recent years has sparked alarm among tobacco control advocates who
fear e-cigarettes will create a new generation of nicotine addicts
who may eventually switch to conventional cigarettes.
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The current study offers fresh cause for concern, said Adam
Leventhal, director of Health, Emotion & Addiction Laboratory at the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“The elevated risk of cigarette use uptake in young populations who
use e-cigarettes is strong and consistent, and this risk is
amplified by the presence or amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes,”
Leventhal, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
“This study adds to the pile of evidence implicating e-cigarette use
in cigarette smoking uptake and also adds new evidence that use of
other products also is associated with cigarette smoking uptake,”
Leventhal said.
Among youth in the study who had tried more than one product at the
start, 74 percent has used e-cigarettes and 65 percent had used a
hookah.
Despite the large size of the study population, one limitation is
the relatively small number of tobacco product users by year end,
particularly the 2 percent of youth who admitted sampling one or
more of these items in the past month. This may have weakened some
connections between cigarette smoking and other tobacco products,
the authors note.
Still, parents should warn children about the dangers of all types
of tobacco products, and be careful not to present e-cigarettes as a
safe option, said Thomas Wills, a researcher at the University of
Hawaii Cancer Center in Honolulu who wasn’t involved in the study.
“They can communicate to their children that they disapprove of all
tobacco products because all of them carry significant risk for
getting addicted and perhaps suffering adverse health consequences,”
Wills said by email.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2qoMuwr JAMA Pediatrics, online January 2,
2018
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