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A survey of younger people suggests that placing certain restrictions on e-cigarettes could prompt some to use tobacco products more.

E-cigarette use has been on the rise among US teenagers, and it isn鈥檛 clear whether that may lead to more young people taking up traditional cigarettes. In the past few years, the European Union has enacted legislation to limit the concentration of nicotine in e-cigarettes, while the US Food and Drug Administration extended its authority over tobacco products to include e-cigarettes.

To understand what effect possible restrictions would have on e-cigarette users in the US, Lauren Pacek at Duke University in North Carolina and her colleagues conducted a survey of 240 people aged 18 to 29. All the participants reported that they had used both e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco cigarettes for more than three months.

They asked the group to respond to three hypothetical scenarios: one in which e-cigarettes in the US are only nicotine-free, one where they are only available in tobacco or menthol flavours and one in which users can鈥檛 modify or customise vaping devices to alter the nicotine dose.

About 47 per cent of respondents said that if regulations eliminated the nicotine in e-cigarettes, they wouldn鈥檛 use them as much and would increase their use of tobacco cigarettes. About 22 per cent said they would make the same changes if regulations limited their ability to customise their devices. And 17 per cent said that if flavours were limited to tobacco or menthol, they would decrease their use of e-cigarettes and smoke more tobacco.

鈥淚t鈥檚 likely some potential new regulations on e-cigarettes will result in a net good for the whole population, such as limiting flavours that might entice young users, improving safety standards or mandating that liquids come in child-proof containers,鈥� Pacek said in a statement. 鈥淗owever, our findings suggest that there should also be thoughtful consideration to potential unintended consequences that could affect other subsets of users of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products.鈥�

This is a small study that can鈥檛 predict the behaviour of the wider population, the team says, and the hypothetical scenarios were the most stringent possibilities. They add that future work should also look into the effects of possible regulations on people who only use one type of tobacco product.