The percentage of middle and high school students who smoke
electronic cigarettes more than doubled between 2011 and 2012, bringing to
light questions about whether an item that is not currently regulated by the
FDA and is touted as less harmful than conventional cigarettes may actually
spur people to smoke the old-fashioned way.
In the first large-scale look at the use of electronic
cigarettes — otherwise known as e-cigarettes — among children, the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control polled 19,000 sixth through tweflth grade students in 2011,
and another 25,000 students in the same age range in 2012.
Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered and deliver
nicotine in aerosol form, and are touted by the companies who make them as a
safer alternative to regular cigarettes. They began to appear on store shelves
in 2006, but marketing of e-cigarettes has exploded in the last few years,
according to the Associated Press.
The study, which was released by the CDC on Thursday, found
that 10 percent of high school students said they'd smoked an e-cigarette in
2012, up from 4.7 percent in 2011. During the same time period, high school
kids who reported smoking e-cigarettes within the last month rose to 2.8 percent
from 1.5 percent in the previous year. E-cigarette use also doubled among
middle school students between 2011 and 2012.
What's more, the researchers found that more than 76 percent
of the middle and high school students surveyed who had used e-cigarettes within
the last month had also smoked conventional cigarettes. When paired with the
fact that 90 percent of adult smokers pick up the habit as teenagers, according
to the CDC, officials worry that kids may be picking up an affinity for
nicotine through e-cigarettes and then getting hooked on conventional
cigarettes.
"The increased use of e-cigarettes by teens is deeply
troubling," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, in a statement.
"Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Many teens who start with e-cigarettes
may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and
conventional cigarettes."
While e-cigarettes are not regulated by the FDA, the agency
in 2011 announced its intent to regulate them as tobacco products rather than
drug delivery devices, putting them in the same category as traditional
cigarettes. More than 20 states have banned store sales of e-cigarettes to
minors so far.
Further compounding the issue is the fact that e-cigarettes,
unlike traditional cigarettes, can be advertised on television. The Public
Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1970 instilled stronger health warnings on
cigarette packaging and banned TV ads for cigarettes, but e-cigarettes do not
yet face that kind of regulation.
The World Health Organization has warned that the safety of
e-cigarettes has not been scientifically
demonstrated, and that "the
testing of some of these products also suggests the presence of other toxic
chemicals" and "there is no way for consumers to find out what is
actually delivered by the product they have purchased."
A study released last month by France's National Consumer
Institute found that, in testing the ingredients of 10 different models of
e-cigarettes, they were "potentially carcinogenic" and could be as
harmful as regular cigarettes because they contain about the same amount of
formaldehyde. The country's health minister has said she intends to ban the use
of e-cigarettes in public places and will restrict them among children under
the age of 18.
Article Credit: http://america.aljazeera.com/
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