Teens who smoke e-cigarettes are the most likely to smoke traditional cigarettes. Two U.S. studies have pointed out the critical nature of the relationship between e-sigs and adolescents.
Adam Leventhal and colleagues, from the department of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at Los Angeles, they conducted a survey through which they asked a group of more than 3,000 students between the ages of 14 and 16 how many of them used e-cigarettes or traditional cigarettes. After six months, the professor met with them again, and it turned out that those using electronic cigarettes switched to traditional cigarettes.
“The study indicates an association between the two behaviors- vaping and smoking-but it does not definitively clarify whether it was really e-cigarettes that induced some kids to smoke, or whether they would have started anyway.” these are the words of John Britton, director of the Center for Alcohol and Tobacco Studies at the University of Nottingham.
An association between these two phenomena has also emerged through other studies conducted in the past. Many people think that vaping is less harmless than cigarettes, but this is actually not the case. It is not certain that e-cigs lead, then, young people to traditional ones, but there is no doubt that they can be addictive.
According to another study conducted on more than 2,000 young people by another research group at the Keck School of Medicine, those who use e-cigarettes are at risk for respiratory disorders such as coughs and bronchitis.
“This is not surprising,” Britton lets us know, ” because we know that the vapor emitted by these products can be irritating to the airways.
Roberta Pacifici, head of the Smoking Observatory, chimes in: “E-cigs certainly do not emit mountain air, but they do evaporate aromas–chocolate, strawberry, vanilla–of food origin. However, it’s one thing to eat a piece of chocolate, it’s another to inhale a cocoa flavor-we have no idea of the possible long-term consequences of depositing these microparticles on the lungs. Clearly, from a harm reduction perspective, it is better for a heavy smoker who is trying to quit to inhale these substances than combusted tobacco. But why would a kid put himself from scratch in a condition of breathing something potentially unhealthy?”
Unfortunately, although purchase by minors is prohibited in Italy, it is not impossible to find ways around the ban on the Internet.
