Giant Study Shows That—Surprise!—Vaping Entices Non-Smokers

Kids who wouldn’t otherwise pick up smoking are using e-cigarettes, researchers found.

<a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/vaping-and-driving-gm531976910-94049753?st=_p_ecigarettes%20teenagers">sestovic</a>/iStock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


E-cigarettes, long touted as a tool to discourage smoking, are actually doing the opposite, according to a landmark study published Monday in Pediatrics. In this first-of-its kind national analysis, researchers found that the devices attract kids who otherwise would not have been likely to pick up smoking.

“E-cigarettes are encouraging—not discouraging—youth to smoke and to consume nicotine, and are expanding the tobacco market,” said a study co-author.

“E-cigarettes are encouraging—not discouraging—youth to smoke and to consume nicotine, and are expanding the tobacco market,” said Stanton Glantz, a co-author and director of the University of California-San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research.

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration announced sweeping regulation of e-cigarettes, which included restricting purchase by those under 18.

The researchers analyzed data from the Center for Disease Control’s National Youth Tobacco Survey between 2004 and 2014, completed by more than 140,000 middle and high schoolers. They found that while cigarette smoking rates declined, the introduction of e-cigarettes had no effect on the decline. Meanwhile, the total use of tobacco products (cigarettes combined with e-cigarettes) has increased. That’s concerning, the researchers say, since several longitudinal studies have found that kids who use e-cigarettes are three times more likely to smoke cigarettes a year later.

Teens who had used tobacco products in the past 30 days, according to the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey Pediatrics

Past research has found that certain characteristics measured in the CDC survey—like living with a smoker, wearing clothing with a tobacco company logo, or saying they would accept cigarettes from a friend—are predictors of a teen’s likelihood of picking up smoking.

But the Pediatrics study found that e-cigarette smokers displayed fewer of these characteristics, leading the researchers to conclude that e-cigarettes are attracting a new population rather than just being used by existing smokers.

Gregory Conley, the president of the American Vaping Association, says that the study’s findings “strain credulity,” as youth smoking is rapidly declining, teens typically use vapor products occasionally rather than habitually, and “only a fraction of recent users report using the products with nicotine.” 

Lauren Dutra, a study co-author and researcher at RTI International, counters that smoking rates were already falling before the advent of e-cigarettes, and that nicotine levels in e-cigarettes are not yet regulated by the FDA.

“I don’t want to say if e-cigarettes didn’t exist, these kids never would have been exposed to nicotine,” says Dutra. But “perhaps these kids wouldn’t have picked up a cigarette or wouldn’t have used nicotine at all had it not been for the existence of e-cigarettes on the market.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate