No gateway

A study from Cardiff University has found that the rapid spread of e-cigarette use among teenagers, aged 13 to 15 years, has not normalized smoking among the same age group.

Published in the BMJ journal Thorax, the study found that e-cigarettes are not a gateway drug for tobacco, as it was once thought. Only 27 percent of teens in 2015 said it was “OK to try a cigarette”, compared with 70 percent 15 years earlier.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported last November that 10 percent of teens aged 13-to-14 admitted to vaping within the last month, but less than four percent had lit up a cigarette.

However, vaping in the United States has jumped by more than 75 percent in 2018 compared with the year before.