The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: e cigarettes
Are E-cigarettes A ‘Gateway’ To Teen Smoking? A New Study Investigates

Are E-cigarettes A ‘Gateway’ To Teen Smoking? A New Study Investigates

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Even though teenage smoking rates have plunged in recent decades, teen use of electronic cigarettes has been on the rise in the last few years. Now, a new study involving more than 2,500 students at 10 Los Angeles schools has found that teens who began using e-cigarettes were far more likely than their peers to start smoking traditional cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products.

Although they don’t establish a causal link, the findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association have some experts worrying that e-cigarettes might lead more young people to take up the habit.

“What is extremely worrisome is that these findings further indicate that e-cigarette use by our nation’s youth, which is a major concern in itself, may also be a gateway to smoking,” American Heart Association Chief Executive Nancy Brown said in a statement. “This new study truly underscores just how dangerous of a habit e-cigarette use can be, especially if it is leading to teens taking up additional tobacco products.”

E-cigarettes heat a liquid laced with nicotine and other chemicals to generate a vapor that can be inhaled. That method, known as “vaping,” presumably sounds better than traditional combustible tobacco products, which are burned to produce a smoke filled with chemicals, many of which are known to cause cancer. The problem is, there isn’t enough evidence yet to say whether, on balance, the devices are helpful or harmful, scientists say.

“E-cigarettes raise many questions for which there are few answers,” Dr. Nancy Rigotti of Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the paper, wrote in an editorial. “The evidence base is limited because e-cigarettes entered the marketplace without being regulated as either drugs or devices.”

Many think that e-cigarettes might allow smokers to transition away from traditional cigarettes, which contain cancer-causing substances. Others argue that e-cigarettes, which often appear to be marketed to youths, could act as a sort of “gateway device” into smoking traditional cigarettes, full of those carcinogenic materials.

That’s a serious matter, given that nearly 90 percent of adult cigarette smokers first started smoking before age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent study showed that the number of high school smokers tripled from 2013 to 2014, and another showed that teens who vaped also smoked regular cigarettes.

But such studies have looked at a snapshot of these two behaviors, and have not watched to see how they change over time _ which would better describe the relationship between the two activities.

So for this study, a team led by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine tracked the behavior of 2,530 students attending L.A. high schools who said they had never before used any combustible tobacco products. The scientists focused on high school freshmen, given that ninth-graders, fresh out of middle school and now exposed to new pressures and older adolescents, are at a critical turning point in their lives.

“The first year of high school is a vulnerable period for initiating risky behaviors,” the JAMA study authors wrote.

The researchers asked the students whether they had ever tried e-cigarettes _ 222 had already tried e-cigarettes at that time. Then they followed up six months later and 12 months later to see if they had ever smoked regular cigarettes or other tobacco products (including cigars and hookah) during the previous six months.

The scientists found that 30.7 percent of students who had ever used e-cigarettes at the start of the study had also used combustible tobacco products at the six-month mark. In the same time period, only 8.1 percent of those who had never used e-cigarettes at the start of their freshman year had smoked tobacco. This pattern held at the 12-month mark as well.

The findings show a link between the two habits, but not a cause. That means it’s possible that there’s some other underlying factor that might be contributing to both behaviors. And the results can’t distinguish between students who may have just tried a few cigarettes and those who ended up as regular smokers, Rigotti noted.

“The latter is the greater concern, and the current study cannot determine whether e-cigarette exposure was associated with that outcome,” she wrote. “Similarly, the single exposure measure, lifetime e-cigarette use, did not permit the authors to look for a dose-response relationship between the degree of prior e-cigarette use and subsequent smoking, which could have strengthened a causal inference.”

Further work will be needed to determine whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship between vaping and smoking, the study authors said.

Regardless, experts said, this doesn’t mean that children should be taking up e-cigarettes at all. But many e-cigarette products appear to be marketed toward youths, they added.

“Knowing the long-term consequences of tobacco use, it is mind boggling to think that anyone would assume e-cigarette use is acceptable among children, when for many it can function as an entry drug,” Dr. Kim Allan Williams, president of the American College of Cardiology, said in a statement. “This research provides one more piece of evidence that what common sense tells us is likely true: inhaling an addictive chemical is not good for anyone.”

Brown, of the American Heart Association, urged the federal government to take action to regulate the products.

“These findings are yet another wake-up call to the Food and Drug Administration that final regulations are needed now to protect our kids from tobacco,” Brown said in a statement.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

This Week In Health: Put Down The O.J.

This Week In Health: Put Down The O.J.

“This Week In Health” offers some highlights from the world of health news and wellness tips that you may have missed this week:

  • The California state legislature passed a mandatory vaccine bill that could be a game changer. Unlike other public health legislation mandating the vaccination of children, the new bill, which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Tuesday, makes no exceptions for religious or “sincerely held” personal beliefs — which is to say, nothing the anti-vaxxers can claim will excuse them from vaccinating their children against whooping cough, measles, and other perfectly preventable illnesses. The bill was introduced after a measles outbreak that began in California earlier this year and was largely attributed to the anti-vaccine movement that has a disturbingly strong hold on certain parts of the state.
  • The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is cracking down on electronic cigarettes. E-cigs — little suckable pens that vaporize liquid nicotine — have existed in a regulatory limbo since they came into popularity a few years ago. According to the AP, an “uptick in nicotine poisonings reported by emergency rooms and poison centers nationwide, many involving infants and children” has compelled the FDA to consider requiring that vials of liquid nicotine used to refill e-cigs, as well as other non-tobacco nicotine-packed consumables (like lotions, gels, and drinks), use child-resistant packaging and stronger warning language on the labels.
  • Everything is bad for you — including, possibly, citrus fruit. This is according to the results of a study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which found a potential link between malignant melanoma and consumption of citrus fruits. This is because fresh citrus fruits contain furocoumarins, photoactive compounds that can heighten an individual’s sensitivity to the sun. “Until we learn more about these furocoumarins,” said the senior author of the report, “those consuming fresh citrus fruits on a regular basis should be extra careful with sun exposure, and depending on their outdoor activities they should wear appropriate sunscreen, hats, and sun-protective clothing.” The report’s authors cautioned that more research was needed and a single study didn’t prove anything. Furthermore, researchers only asked participants about their intake of grapefruits and oranges — so lemons and limes may still be safe.

Photo: Caitlin Regan via Flickr

Study: Many Teens Who Use E-Cigarettes Also Smoke Regular Cigarettes

Study: Many Teens Who Use E-Cigarettes Also Smoke Regular Cigarettes

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Public health experts fear electronic cigarettes — with their colorful designs and array of sweet flavorings — will induce young people to start smoking. But are those fears justified? A new study from Wales offers mixed results.

Researchers found that 5.8 percent of preteens surveyed said they had used e-cigarettes, and nearly two-thirds of them had tried the battery-powered devices only once. By comparison, fewer than 2 percent of the 10- and 11-year-olds in the same survey had tried regular cigarettes, with about half of them describing themselves as current smokers, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal BMJ Open.

Although the overwhelming majority of kids in this age group had never smoked anything, there was a concerning overlap among kids who had tried electronic and traditional cigarettes. For instance, compared with those who had never smoked traditional cigarettes, those who had were 16 times more likely to have tried e-cigarettes as well. Likewise, the small number of kids who were current smokers were 17 times more likely than their nonsmoking counterparts to have used e-cigarettes too.

Both types of smoking were more popular among an older group of students between the ages of 11 and 16. In this group, 12.3 percent had tried electronic cigarettes and 1.5 percent used them at least once a month. In addition, 12.1 percent had used regular cigarettes, including the 5.4 percent who were current smokers.

Once again, researchers found a link between use of electronic and tobacco cigarettes. Four out of five of those who used e-cigarettes regularly had also tried traditional cigarettes. And compared to nonsmokers, current tobacco smokers were more than 100 times more likely to smoke e-cigarettes as well.

Still, even in this older age group, 43.2 percent of kids and teens who described themselves as regular users of e-cigarettes said they were not current tobacco smokers. And among the kids and teens who had used e-cigarettes just “a few times,” 72.1 percent were not current tobacco smokers.

The study was based on data from two different surveys — one involving 1,601 primary school students who were 10 or 11 years old and another that included 9,055 secondary school students between the ages of 11 and 16.

When all the data was put together, a pattern emerged: Electronic cigarettes were more popular than traditional cigarettes up through the ages of 15 and 16, when the kids were in school-year 11. After that, tobacco smoking became more common.

In school-years 6, 7, and 8 — when kids were between the ages of 10 and 13 — the majority of those who had tried e-cigarettes had not tried tobacco. School-year 9 (ages 13 and 14) was the tipping point, with half of those who had used e-cigarettes at least once saying they had also used traditional cigarettes at least once. Among older teens, the majority of those who had used e-cigarettes had also used tobacco.

One thing seemed quite clear from the data: Teens were not using e-cigarettes to help them kick their tobacco habit. The fact that current smokers were just as likely to use e-cigarettes as were people who had smoked just a few times “indicates that young people are not adopting e-cigarettes as an effective means of quitting tobacco,” the researchers wrote.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo Credit: AFP/Jim Watson

E-Cigarettes Should Be Banned For Minors: U.S. Heart Association

E-Cigarettes Should Be Banned For Minors: U.S. Heart Association

Washington (AFP) — E-cigarettes should be subject to the same regulations as cigarettes and should not be sold to minors, the American Heart Association (AHA) said in new policy guidelines out Monday.

The use of e-cigarettes, which are electrical devices that heat flavored nicotine liquid into a vapor that is inhaled, much like traditional cigarettes but without the smoke, has been rising rapidly among youths in recent years, raising concerns about the potential for addiction risks and health damage.

E-cigarettes are currently unregulated, meaning they can be sold to youths and are openly advertised, unlike cigarette-makers which must follow strict rules about where and how their products are marketed.

The AHA guidelines go a step further than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s April proposal, which set out a new series of regulations on e-cigarettes that included banning their sale to minors, but did not restrict advertising or online sales of the candy and fruit-flavored liquids that some say are targeted at young people. A public comment period on the FDA’s proposal ended earlier this month, and the new rules have not yet been implemented.

“Recent studies raise concerns that e-cigarettes may be a gateway to traditional tobacco products for the nation’s youth, and could renormalize smoking in our society,” said Nancy Brown, CEO of AHA.

“These disturbing developments have helped convince the association that e-cigarettes need to be strongly regulated, thoroughly researched and closely monitored.”

The guidelines, published in the journal Circulation, recommend that since e-cigarettes contain nicotine, they “should be subject to all laws that apply to these products.”

The AHA “also calls for strong new regulations to prevent access, sales and marketing of e-cigarettes to youth, and for more research into the product’s health impact.”

The sales of e-cigarettes have risen sharply since they were introduced to the market in 2007, according to health officials.

The number of high school students who tried e-cigarettes nearly doubled, from 4.7 percent in 2011 to 10 percent in 2012, and sales of e-cigarettes could top $2 billion this year, according to industry estimates.

According to Georgetown University pulmonologist Nathan Cobb, the AHA “is right in calling for this minimal set of regulations to be implemented no later than the end of the year.”

He also said more aggressive regulations should follow.

“They can and should be part of a concerted regulatory push to drive towards a tobacco ‘end game,’ which increases the price of combusted tobacco cigarettes while guaranteeing the safety and consistency of e-cigarettes.”

Cobb added that the FDA’s “bare bones regulations” fall short because they subject manufacturers to “significantly less oversight and safety requirements than pet food manufacturers, and are truly a minimum.”

AFP Photo/Joe Raedle

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!