Concerns raised about increased e-cigarette use in teenagers

Concerns raised about increased e-cigarette use in teenagers

“E-cigarettes: Many teenagers trying them, survey concludes,” BBC News reports after a survey of around 16,000 English teenagers found one in five teens had tried an e-cigarette.

The concern is that rather than using e-cigarettes as a device to stop smoking, teenagers with no history of smoking could be using e-cigarettes because of their novelty value. This hypothesis seems to be borne out by the survey finding that 16% of teen e-cig users said they had never smoked conventional cigarettes.

While e-cigarettes are undoubtedly far safer than cigarettes, this does not mean they are 100% safe. Nicotine is a powerful substance and it is unclear what long-term effects it may have, especially on a teenage brain and nervous system that is still developing.

The study also found a strong association between alcohol misuse, such as binge drinking, and access to e-cigarettes. Other experts fear e-cigs could act as a potential gateway to smoking among children.

From 2016, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is expected to license e-cigarettes as a medicine in the UK, so they should become an age-restricted product.

One limitation of the study, however, is that it relied on self-reporting, so it is prone to selection bias. This makes its findings less reliable.

One final message you may want to convey to your children is that a nicotine addiction brings no useful benefits, but it can be expensive (especially for a teenager) and its long-term effects are unclear.

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