consumption of tobacco in cigarettes and pipes cause heart attacks, cardiovascular attacks, pneumonia and cancer, among other diseases. Although the level of this type of consumption is declining in the world, since 2003 they have been advertised to electronic cigarettes as an alternative to quit smoking and have attracted not only adults but also girls, boys and adolescents.
A new study published by the specialized magazine tobacco control and carried out with a follow-up of adolescents from the United States and United Kingdom presented evidence proving the opposite of the advertising claims. When they vapeadolescents increase the risk of becoming heavy smokers when they are older.
In addition, other research published in the journal Plos One found that e-cigarette use had declined during the early stage of the coronavirus pandemic. But use is back to pre-pandemic levels among teens and young adults.
The use of electronic cigarettes was 27% older in the second year of the pandemic (between April 2021 and April 2022), compared to the months of March to July 2020, when there were more accessibility restrictions, according to the work of Elizabeth Hair’s team, from the Truth Initiative Schroeder Institute and the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Those 21 and older are more likely to use e-cigarettes than youth of the same age surveyed before the pandemic.
Electronic cigarettes began to be sold in 2003. By 2011, there were already about 7 million adult users of electronic cigarettes worldwide. During the last few years, there has been a debate generated as a result of advertising on whether the start of the use of these products leads to the consumption or reduction of the use of traditional cigarettes.
Several longitudinal studies have shown that e-cigarette use does increase the odds of starting tobacco use and become a regular smoker. The team of scientists led by Jeremy Staff, from the Pennsylvania State Universityin the USA considered that it was necessary to know how these devices can affect adolescents who started smoking at an early age.
teens who smoke before the age of 15 are especially vulnerable to developing dependence of nicotine, and the researchers wanted to find out if the simultaneous use of e-cigarettes could influence the future smoking patterns of this group, and in what way.
They were based on data from 1,893 adolescent smokers from two large, nationally representative cohort studies in the United Kingdom and the United States. Participants were regularly surveyed about their vaping use and how often they smoked conventional cigarettes up to age 17.
Among teens who started using conventional cigarettes early in the UK, 57% said they also used vapers. The equivalent figure for America’s first teen smokers was 58%.
By late adolescence, those who had smoked tobacco while vaping they were more likely to continue smoking around age 18.
Among the UK participants, 61% of users were still smoking into their late teens, compared to 50% of non-smokers. The equivalent figures for the United States participants were 42% and 24%.
The odds of continuing to smoke at the end of adolescence among dual consumers they were 45% higher than those of non-smokers in the United States and 119% higher than those of non-smokers in the United Kingdom, according to work published by the researchers in the journal tobacco control.
In addition, by late adolescence, frequent smoking – defined as more than 6 cigarettes a week or at least 27 a month – was almost twice as frequent among early-start smokers in the UK (37%). than among non-smokers (23%).
Also in the United States, frequent use was found to triple among those who vaped in their early teens (20%) compared to those who used the products (7%).
Overall, the odds of frequent smoking in late adolescence were double among dual users among non-smokers in early adolescence in the UK.
Similarly, the odds of frequent smoking versus not smoking were 5 times higher among dual users among those who had not smoked in their early teens in the United States.
“The new study is very valuable. Provide more evidence that e-cigarettes cause teens who start using them at an early age to have later patterns of use continuous and more frequent of tobacco years later”, he commented in dialogue by video call with Infobae Danny McGoldrick, vice president of research for the Tobacco Free Kids of the United States organization, who was not involved in the study.
In contrast, there was no evidence that e-cigarette use affected young people to not be tobacco smokers. In other words, electronic cigarettes do not imply a transition to smoking cessation among today’s youth, McGoldrick stressed.
“The results of the new study corroborate that the electronic cigarette is a gateway to smoking tobacco,” he told infobae Brunhilda Casetta, doctor and coordinator of the smoking cessation program of the CEMIC in Buenos Aires.
“Some people have a fantasy that using e-cigarettes will allow them to stay tobacco free. However, the neurobiology of nicotine addiction highlights the fact that inhalation route it is the privileged access of the addictive substance due to its almost instantaneous arrival from the lung to the brain”, Casetta pointed out.
The new study by the Pennsylvania researchers, he added, confirmed that being a smoker at age 18 is significantly associated with having used an e-cigarette as a teenager compared with non-users.
Meanwhile, from the FIC Argentina organization, dedicated to promoting public health policies to reduce the risk factors of chronic non-communicable diseases, the doctor Marita Pizarroco-executive director of the institution, specified that the use of electronic cigarettes contributes to the smoking epidemic persist in the world. They expose children and adolescents to a three times greater risk of starting to use traditional tobacco and being smokers when they are young and adults.
“There is a misleading message being spread by the industry that e-cigarettes, like heated tobacco products, are part of a harm reduction strategy. There is evidence that shows that there is no safe level of consumption of tobacco products or exposure to tobacco smoke that guarantees that the people who use them do not get sick and die prematurely,” warned Pizarro.
To protect children and adolescents against misleading Advertising, new measures related to the formulation of public health policies are needed. “In Argentina, for example, the regulatory authority for medicines and medical technologies prohibited the commercialization, distribution and promotion of the electronic cigarette, but there is a lack of supervision of this norm”, he expressed.
From FIC and other organizations that defend the human right to health, they consider that Argentina should ratify as soon as possible the public health treaty, known as the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control, which was signed in 2003, and should modify the national tobacco control law, which was enacted by Congress in 2011.
“National law must follow the best current international standards and cover all tobacco products,” Pizarro said. It should also advance a comprehensive form of ban on the promotion, advertising, sponsorship, and display of all products, including e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.”
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