TheNewsMonkey
Postman
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2013
- Messages
- 158
As the debate surrounding e-cigs continues to evolve, one factor has been given increasing prominence – the concern that e-cigs will provide a gateway to nicotine addiction for teenagers.
Now, from within the vaping community, this sounds like complete rubbish, since we all know that the taste of an e-cig compares to the taste of a tobacco cigarette in much the same way as a waft of fragrant applewood smoke compares to standing next to a smouldering compost heap. The idea that anyone would want to ‘trade’ the aromatic flavour of an e-cig for the unpleasant taste of a tobacco cigarette is very strange.
It is a real concern, however, which is why all responsible vendors have already set a voluntary age limit on sales, and it is something it’s important to monitor.
A piece of research that has been published recently looked at the uptake of electronic cigarettes in American teenagers. This study is unfortunately of quite small scale, but the numbers they present make for very interesting reading.
Out of a wide range of teenagers – who, let’s face it, are willing to try just about anything; (I’m sure pretty much everyone reading this who smoked would have started while in their teens, if not earlier, as well as experimenting with other drugs or behaviours) – you might expect to find a few non-smokers who had jumped on the e-cig bandwagon, but this was not the case.
The study started with 288 subjects, two of whom were excluded from most of the statistics, since most of the questions were related to knowledge about e-cigs, and these two (less than 1% of the group surveyed) were the only ones who had tried ecigs. Not surprisingly (to most of us, at least) both of these e-cig users were current smokers.
None of the non-smokers had tried an e-cig, despite the fact that 67% of the people surveyed had heard of them.
Of the smokers in the sample, 74% were willing to try an e-cig, compared with only 13% for non-smokers. Interestingly, this result (18% of the total sample) is comparable to the numbers who would be willing to try a real cigarette, demonstrating that e-cigs have no greater appeal to teenagers than real ones. This in itself would seem to refute the argument that the flavours in e-cigs make them more appealing to youths, but the research went further, and directly compared the appeal of plain (tobacco-flavoured) vs flavoured e-cigs, concluding:
“willingness to try plain versus flavored varieties did not differ. This preliminary finding suggests that, at present, candy or fruit flavors do not increase the attractiveness of e-cigarettes to adolescents.”
The study found two main factors which affected the appeal of e-cigs: the willingness to try increased with age (29% of 17-19 year olds vs 11% of 11-13 year olds), which is most probably a reflection of older teens’ willingness to experiment with pretty much anything. For example, in the US, nearly 40% of 12th grade students will have used marijuana in the preceding year, compared with around 15% for 8th gradehttp://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/forums/#_edn1. This comparison also highlights something else worthy of note – fewer teenagers are willing to try the legal and widely marketed e-cig than HAVE tried the illegal and supposedly unavailable marijuana, demonstrating that prohibiting something does not reduce its appeal (in fact it is more likely to increase it) or its availability. (Don’t worry though, because the WHO FCTC has some grand plans to make illicit tobacco smuggling illegal – so that’s alright then!)
The other factor that they found (which won’t surprise anyone who vapes) was a pre-existing smoking habit:
“Being a smoker was the strongest predictor of willingness to try an e-cigarette. Even after controlling for other statistically significant correlates, the odds of a smoker being willing to try an e-cigarette were 10 times the odds of a non-smoker.”
This study seems to fairly conclusively demonstrate that concerns about the uptake of e-cigs by non-smoking teenagers are largely baseless, although it would be useful to see this repeated with both larger samples and in different areas (such as the UK and EU) .
For another view on this, our friends at the Ashtray blog have also had something to say.
http://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/forums/#_ednref1 http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/data/12data/fig12_1.pdf
Update From ECITA
Now, from within the vaping community, this sounds like complete rubbish, since we all know that the taste of an e-cig compares to the taste of a tobacco cigarette in much the same way as a waft of fragrant applewood smoke compares to standing next to a smouldering compost heap. The idea that anyone would want to ‘trade’ the aromatic flavour of an e-cig for the unpleasant taste of a tobacco cigarette is very strange.
It is a real concern, however, which is why all responsible vendors have already set a voluntary age limit on sales, and it is something it’s important to monitor.
A piece of research that has been published recently looked at the uptake of electronic cigarettes in American teenagers. This study is unfortunately of quite small scale, but the numbers they present make for very interesting reading.
Out of a wide range of teenagers – who, let’s face it, are willing to try just about anything; (I’m sure pretty much everyone reading this who smoked would have started while in their teens, if not earlier, as well as experimenting with other drugs or behaviours) – you might expect to find a few non-smokers who had jumped on the e-cig bandwagon, but this was not the case.
The study started with 288 subjects, two of whom were excluded from most of the statistics, since most of the questions were related to knowledge about e-cigs, and these two (less than 1% of the group surveyed) were the only ones who had tried ecigs. Not surprisingly (to most of us, at least) both of these e-cig users were current smokers.
None of the non-smokers had tried an e-cig, despite the fact that 67% of the people surveyed had heard of them.
Of the smokers in the sample, 74% were willing to try an e-cig, compared with only 13% for non-smokers. Interestingly, this result (18% of the total sample) is comparable to the numbers who would be willing to try a real cigarette, demonstrating that e-cigs have no greater appeal to teenagers than real ones. This in itself would seem to refute the argument that the flavours in e-cigs make them more appealing to youths, but the research went further, and directly compared the appeal of plain (tobacco-flavoured) vs flavoured e-cigs, concluding:
“willingness to try plain versus flavored varieties did not differ. This preliminary finding suggests that, at present, candy or fruit flavors do not increase the attractiveness of e-cigarettes to adolescents.”
The study found two main factors which affected the appeal of e-cigs: the willingness to try increased with age (29% of 17-19 year olds vs 11% of 11-13 year olds), which is most probably a reflection of older teens’ willingness to experiment with pretty much anything. For example, in the US, nearly 40% of 12th grade students will have used marijuana in the preceding year, compared with around 15% for 8th gradehttp://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/forums/#_edn1. This comparison also highlights something else worthy of note – fewer teenagers are willing to try the legal and widely marketed e-cig than HAVE tried the illegal and supposedly unavailable marijuana, demonstrating that prohibiting something does not reduce its appeal (in fact it is more likely to increase it) or its availability. (Don’t worry though, because the WHO FCTC has some grand plans to make illicit tobacco smuggling illegal – so that’s alright then!)
The other factor that they found (which won’t surprise anyone who vapes) was a pre-existing smoking habit:
“Being a smoker was the strongest predictor of willingness to try an e-cigarette. Even after controlling for other statistically significant correlates, the odds of a smoker being willing to try an e-cigarette were 10 times the odds of a non-smoker.”
This study seems to fairly conclusively demonstrate that concerns about the uptake of e-cigs by non-smoking teenagers are largely baseless, although it would be useful to see this repeated with both larger samples and in different areas (such as the UK and EU) .
For another view on this, our friends at the Ashtray blog have also had something to say.
http://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/forums/#_ednref1 http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/data/12data/fig12_1.pdf
Update From ECITA
