E-cigarettes and smoking among teenagers

A study published today in BMC Public Health shows a potentially harmful relationship between teenagers who use e-cigarettes who then smoke tobacco cigarettes. This behavior can undermine hard-won advances in tobacco control, largely achieved through preventing adolescents from starting smoking. Study author Jean Long talks more about the research on this blog.

In 2013, the Tobacco Policy Review Group published Tobacco Free Ireland, a report that set the target for Ireland to reduce smoking prevalence to less than 5% by 2025. The report identified tobacco damage reduction as an important issue to consider. Since the introduction of e-cigarettes in the European Union (EU) in 2006 and the United States of America (USA) in 2007, research has been conducted into their potential benefits in terms of reducing tobacco and public health harm of e-cigarettes -cigarettes has grown. The systematic analysis of evidence reported in this article outlines what is known so far about e-cigarette use and the start of smoking tobacco cigarettes in teenagers. There are two sister reviews: the first maps the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes [McCarthy 2020] and the second presents a systematic overview of the role of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation [Quigley 2020]. These reviews are one of the contributions to the Irish Government’s policy and clinical guidance on e-cigarettes. Buy special e-liquid online. 

E-cigarette among students

Our systematic review, published in BMC Public Health, found that e-cigarette use among teenagers in Europe and North America is linked to the onset of tobacco smoking. Based on the adjusted odds ratios of nine primary studies, our meta-analysis calculated a three to six times higher probability of starting tobacco smoking for teenagers who had ever used e-cigarettes at the start of the study. These results identify an important health-related harm and are supported by four additional systematic reviews. [Soneji 2017; Glaser 2019; Khouja 2019; Aladeokin and Haighton 2019] Three of these reviews were from young adults [Soneji 2017; Glaser 2019; Khouja 2019] and one was with teenagers living in the UK [Aladeokin and Haighton 2019]. These results are important as the prevalence of e-cigarette use increases in Europe and North America. For example, the prevalence of e-cigarette use among teenagers in the US increased from 1.5% in 2011 to 20.8% in 2018 [Cullen 2018] and in Ireland use is ever 22% [Költő 2020]. In addition, there is a danger that society will not be able to protect the achievements in reducing tobacco smoking among adolescents.

The study provides additional support for urgent responses from policymakers to phasing out teenage use in order to reduce direct harm in this vulnerable population.

Availability of e-cigarettes

Given the availability and use of e-cigarettes, this study provides additional support for urgent policymaker responses to cease their use by teenagers in order to reduce direct harm in this vulnerable population. The study presented in this paper was conducted as part of a wider program of evidence reviews to inform and support public health policy in Ireland that included mapping the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes (and their e-liquids) [McCarthy 2020 ] and a systematic review of the role of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation [Quigley 2020]. We found that e-cigarettes (and their e-liquids) lead to acute harm such as poisoning, lung injuries, burns, and blast injuries, a finding that is consistent with six other systematic reviews [Peruga 2020; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine 2018, Pisinger 2014; CADTH 2017; Byrne 2018; Bals 2019], stressing the need for an ongoing study of robust methods to measure the long-term health effects of their use, as these are not yet known. Mr-joy for the best e cigarette online.

Children and adolescents need the same protection from e-cigarettes as conventional tobacco cigarettes

Children and adolescents need the same protection from e-cigarettes as traditional tobacco cigarettes through a well-enforced regulatory system of measures, including Age restrictions on purchases, control of availability through licensing agencies, restrictions on product visibility and attractiveness and reasonable pricing through taxation.