Since vaping is a nicotine replacement therapy that should only be used by adults who are trying to wean down their dependency to combustible cigarettes, it’s concerning when anyone underage gets their hands on a product designed to combat nicotine addiction. However, there’s good news! A 2019 e-cigarette study examined a controlled group of teens and has concluded that the proposed link between e-cig use and future combustible cigarette use is largely attributable to shared risk factors and not experimentation. This means that while teens are doing what teens do, trying new things, e-cigarette use won’t increase their risk of becoming smokers. That’s right! This e-cigarette study is debunking this long-standing myth!
The study
In November 2019, new research was published in the medical journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research suggesting that any relationship between teenage vaping and smoking can be attributed to shared risk factors — the individual is surrounded by peers or parents who smoke combustible cigarettes or they consume alcohol.
The findings of the above e-cigarette study bridge off from another analysis reviewed at the University of California, San Francisco. This 2018 research concluded that the progression of e-cigarette use was not a direct correlation with e-cig experimentation and those who went on to smoke combustible cigarettes were part of an established group who had experimented with cigarettes before.
What was the result?
The e-cigarette study evaluated 12,000 middle school and high school students across the United States, using complex statistical methods to account for pre-existing differences among the group and looking at demographic information such as race and sex, as well as behavioral information, such as how often a teen was disciplined and how often they took risks.
Arielle Selya, the study’s lead author and assistant scientist at Sanford Health in South Dakota said, “it’s really important to hold off on making policies on e-cigarettes—like Eonsmoke Disposable Devices—until we have a more solid understanding… [because my] research undermines the ‘gateway hypothesis’ that vaping leads to smoking.”
That being said, while there are studies that are published in the media telling the public that adolescents who vape will likely start smoking, it’s important to know that these researchers are drawing a very difficult conclusion that’s not based on the shared risk factors around them.
“Most studies out there are biased when it comes to looking at the effects of e-cigarettes [because of] a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ about regulating vaping products,” said Selya and “over-regulating e-cigarettes could actually push teenagers to smoke” not the other way around.
What are your thoughts on this contemporary e-cigarette study? Drop a comment below to share your thoughts.
