While the use of e-cigarettes among young people may be linked to smoking later in life, it does not mean that smoking is increasing in the general population. This is according to a new study from the US.
"The incidence of cigarette smoking due to e-cigarette use at the population level is very small," write the researchers, who compared behavioural patterns among teenagers over a three-year period.
How much does using e-cigarettes at a young age increase the risk of switching to smoking later? To find out, researchers at the Universities of Michigan and Birmingham (Alabama) compared young people who had never smoked cigarettes but started vejpa with young people who neither smoked nor vejpa at the same time. In total, they compared patterns of behaviour between almost 9,000 young people, over a period of three years. The young people were aged 12 to 17 at the start of the measurements.
Marginally increased risk of smoking
It was found that the risks of young vejps switching to smoking were relatively low - although they were higher than for those who did neither at the beginning of the measurement.
"Overall, the absolute risk of continued smoking in those who had vejpat was 2.07 per cent compared to 1.19 per cent among non-vejpers." say the researchers in Pulmonology Advisor magazine
External factors influenced
The researchers were also able to see a clear correlation in the prospective smokers by taking other factors into account. Smoking parents, passive smoking, grades, ethnicity, smoking friends, use of other drugs (alcohol and cannabis), extroverted or introverted problem solving were all factors that had an impact in the end.
Smoking at lowest level ever
At the same time, the researchers point out that the results should not be interpreted to mean that vejping among young people increases smoking across the population as a whole. The latest measurements show that smoking among the adult population in the US is lower than ever, nearly 11 per cent. Among young people, the proportion of smokers has been declining at an accelerated pace since the popularity of e-cigarettes, with only two per cent smoking and 14 per cent reporting having used an e-cigarette in the last 30 days.
Very little impact
But the fact that things look a little different at the individual level does not necessarily mean a contradiction, say the researchers.
"On the one hand, there is a positive association between e-cigarette use and subsequent smoking. On the other hand, given the low prevalence of smoking, the absolute risks of continued smoking for both e-cigarette users and non-users, and the risk differences between them, are very small. The change in cigarette smoking prevalence due to e-cigarette use at the population level is thus very small" writes the researchers in their analysis.
The marginal increase would probably have been a clear reduction if the rules of the game were fair.
Authorities do everything they can to make it difficult for people to buy e-cigarettes, ensuring that they are both as impractical as possible and have the worst possible flavour, while regular cigarettes are available everywhere and contain unlimited amounts of additives to make them as appealing as possible.
If e-cigs had been sold under the same conditions, it is likely that users who started with e-cigarettes would have generated fewer smokers than the control group.
I think there is a proportion of e-cigarette users who give up complicated rules and take to the much simpler and more accessible cigarettes. The group is probably not large on the barrier to go from vejp to smoking is gigantically high but it exists, I know that. In countries with flavour bans, the difference is smaller and the risk of switching from vejp to smoking higher