, US, Feb 15 – E-cigarettes can be an effective tool for smokers aiming to kick their tobacco habit, but officials fear the devices are also creating nicotine addiction among adolescents.
“E-cigarettes show tremendous promise as a tool for helping smokers who
, US, Feb 15 – E-cigarettes can be an effective tool for smokers aiming to kick their tobacco habit, but officials fear the devices are also creating nicotine addiction among adolescents.
“E-cigarettes show tremendous promise as a tool for helping smokers who don’t respond to other approaches for quitting smoking,” Wilson Compton, deputy director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, said Friday, during a presentation with other health officials.
“What concerns us is very recent data from the US showing surprising high rates of e-cigarette use by teenagers,” he said, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in California.
A recent annual survey of more than 40,000 US high school students showed that in the last month, 8.7 percent of 14-year-olds had used the battery-operated devices that deliver vaporized nicotine into an aerosol inhaled by the user.
And the number only increased with age: 16.2 percent of 16-year-olds and 17.1 percent of 18-year-olds had done the same.
“That’s a concern because this may be a unique and new pathway to nicotine exposure,” Compton said.
In recent months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that use of e-cigarettes by young non-smokers had tripled from 2011 to 2013, and warned that nicotine can affect brain development in teenagers.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April proposed restrictions on the country’s $2-billion e-cigarette industry, such as requiring sellers to enforce a minimum age.
– ‘Far less dangerous’ 