‘Cool, fun factor’ draws teenagers to e-cigarettes: Study

Toronto: Far from helping teenagers
quit smoking, e-cigarettes may in fact initiate more youth into nicotine use as
adolescents find them “cool, fun and something new” to experiment
with, suggests new research.

“While e-cigarettes are frequently
used as devices for smoking cessation in adults, we found most students in our
survey were motivated by the ‘cool/fun/something new’ features of
e-cigarettes,” said one of the researchers, Michael Khoury, who conducted
the research as a pediatric cardiology resident at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick
Children.

Designed to look like cigarettes,
e-cigarettes are battery-powered device that vaporise liquids -- which often
contain nicotine.

Previous studies have found increasing
rates of e-cigarette use by adolescents in the US and Canada, and some have
found higher rates of e-cigarette use in adolescents exposed to tobacco.

In Canada, e-cigarette use is now more
common than cigarette use by teenagers, according to the researchers.

The researchers sought to understand
the motivation, frequency and other factors for use of e-cigarettes by teens that
were part of a school-based programme that screens for cardiovascular risk
factors.

The study involved 2,367 students aged
14-15 years enrolled in grade nine in the Niagara region of Ontario, Canada.

Of the 2,367 teens who responded to at
least one question in the smoking section of the survey, nearly 70 per cent had
heard about e-cigarettes and over 10 per cent had used e-cigarettes.

The novelty factor of e-cigarettes is
the key motivation for their use by adolescents, the study, published in CMAJ
(Canadian Medical Association Journal), found.

E-cigarette use was more common among
male respondents who were already using cigarettes and other tobacco products,
and in those whose family or friends smoked, the findings showed.

The researchers found that smoking
cessation did not appear to be a driver of e-cigarette use.

“Use of e-cigarettes was (also)
associated with lower self-identified health level, greater stress level and a
lower estimated household income, which suggests that e-cigarette use may have
some key associations that may help to identify adolescents at risk,” the
authors wrote.

--IANS