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The Jekyll-Hyde of e-cigarettes
While e-cigarettes or vaping may help some adults quit smoking tobacco, new studies suggest it may start teens on cigarettes and lead to a lifetime of tobacco use. Studies show more teenagers are using e-cigarettes than traditional tobacco products. This may be because of marketing that targets teens using candy or fruit flavored e-cigarettes. Their peers also heavily influence them.
In two thousand fourteen, a survey of those young people who used any tobacco or tobacco related product, found that sixty-three percent had used e-cigarettes prior to tobacco use. Teens believe e-cigarettes do not contain the cancer-causing chemicals in traditional cigarettes. While studies do show that e-cigarettes have lower levels of cancer-causing ingredients, they still emit substantial levels of carcinogens.
E-cigarettes contain acrylonitrile, acrolein, propylene oxide, acrylamide and crotanaldehyde. Plus, the compounds in flavoring can also become toxic.
In order to understand the path to tobacco use, researchers in the new study used simulation population models to compare smoking cessation versus vaping use. The model predicted that more than two thousand adult smokers would quit for at least seven years because of conversion to vaping. But it also predicted that nearly one-hundred-seventy-thousand young people would start with vaping and graduate to tobacco use. This math suggests the effects of e-cigarettes are far more negative than positive. The clincher is its conclusion that more than one and a half billion years of life would be lost due to e-cigarettes.
More Information
Adolescents' interest in trying flavoured e-cigarettes
More US adolescents use e-cigarettes than smoke cigarettes. Research suggests flavoured e-cigarettes appeal to youth, but little is known about perceptions of and reasons for attraction to specific flavours...
E-cigarettes cause more harm than good on a population level
Although some adults may successfully quit smoking through the use of e-cigarettes, the number of those who benefit from the product is far outweighed by the number of teenagers and young adults who transition from e-cigarette use to cigarette smoking and the number of years lost on a population level, according to research published in PLoS ONE..
Quantifying population-level health benefits and harms of e-cigarette use in the United States
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) may help cigarette smokers quit smoking, yet they may also facilitate cigarette smoking for never-smokers. We quantify the balance of health benefits and harms associated with e-cigarette use at the population level...
Teen e-cigarette users exposed to carcinogenic compounds
E-cigarette vapor was found to be less hazardous than tobacco smoke but still contained organic compounds identified as carcinogenic, according to findings in a recently published study of adolescent e-cigarette users...
