Teenagers in the US who use electronic cigarettes are six times more likely than are those who don’t use such devices to move on to traditional cigarettes, according to a story by Randy Dotinga for HealthDay citing a study involving about 300 high school students published on June 13 in the journal Pediatrics.
“Adolescents who had never smoked, but who had used e-cigarettes, were substantially more likely to begin smoking combustible cigarettes over the next year,” said study lead author Jessica Barrington-Trimis, a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Southern California’s Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science.
“The increase in e-cigarette use, which may be followed by increases in cigarette use, could result in an erosion of the progress that has been made over the last several decades in tobacco control.”
Barrington-Trimis admitted that it couldn’t be concluded that e-cigarettes caused teenagers to smoke cigarettes, but she said that “those who had used e-cigarettes at baseline were substantially more likely to begin smoking cigarettes”.
But Peter Hajek, director of tobacco research with the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Queen Mary, University of London, criticized the work. “The authors misinterpret their findings,” Hajek said. “Like several previous studies of this type, this one just shows that people who try things, try things.”
Other research showed that overall smoking by adolescents is declining even as e-cigarette use rises, Hajek added.
“In fact, the decline in youth smoking over the past few years has been faster than ever before. This does not necessarily mean that e-cigarette experimentation prevents the uptake of smoking, although this is possible,” he said. “But there is clear and strong evidence that such experimentation does not contribute to smoking uptake.”