In US schools, vaping rules. In 2014, for the first time, . Whether the rise of e-cigarettes is welcome news or a fresh face on an old public-health menace is not yet clear.
The percentage of high schoolers smoking e-cigarettes leaped from 1.5 per cent in 2011 to 13.4 per cent in 2014. This makes e-cigarettes the most commonly consumed tobacco product. The survey showed cigarette smoking was down from 15.8 per cent in 2011 to 9.8 per cent in 2014 among this age group.
If the 22,000 youngsters polled for the are representative of their peers nationwide, this equates to 2.4 million students vaping last year, triple the number in 2013. Using a hookah was also twice as popular among high schoolers in 2014 as in 2013.
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The study was carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Its thinking on the matter is clear. 鈥淚n the case of kids, e-cigarettes are harmful all by themselves because of the effects of nicotine on children鈥檚 brains,鈥� says Brian King of the organisation鈥檚 Office on Smoking and Health. 鈥淭he big picture here is we鈥檙e seeing a striking increase. It鈥檚 very concerning. It more than counterbalances the decrease in cigarette smoking, which we鈥檝e seen occurring over the last few years.鈥�
King says the CDC rejects any notion that replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes is positive, and claims that e-cigarettes are actually prompting youngsters to take up smoking, not just taking the place of cigarettes. 鈥淚n just one year, the number of kids using hookah doubled, and the number of kids using e-cigarettes appears to have tripled,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hese increases are driving an uptick in the total number of our children who are using tobacco products for the first time in a generation.鈥�
A , suggests that vaping does not have the same foothold on the other side of the Atlantic. Researchers at Cardiff University found that e-cigarette use is only catching up with traditional tobacco use in younger teenagers, with those aged 15 and 16 still preferring cigarettes.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration is mulling over new rules that would bring all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, under the same legal blanket. Currently, e-cigarettes may be marketed to children, but their manufacturers could soon find themselves bound by the same strict regulations as their combustible cousins.
