A new study in the United States suggests e-cigarettes is not at all a factor in the decline of teen smoking. It is believed to actually entice non-smoking teens to try it out instead of trying out traditional cigarettes.
In the past 10 years, youth smoking decreased. The co-author of the study, Dr. Stanton Glantz, said in a statement, "There is strong evidence in adults, together with some, but more limited evidence in youth, that e-cigarettes are associated with less, not more quitting cigarettes."
Glantz, who is the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California in San Francisco, added most e-cigarette users are dual users, which means they smoke both the traditional and the gadget-linked cigarettes. The research was published in the online journal called Pediatrics on Jan. 23.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered and use a heating element that turns liquid nicotine into a cloud of vapor, which the users inhale to mimic the same act being done when smoking a traditional cigarette. It was introduced in the past when e-cigarettes made its way to the market in 2007, aiming to ultimately make smokers quit. However, arguments increased in the past years claiming e-cigarettes might actually lure a new generation into nicotine addiction defeating the initial purpose of the product, Reuters reported.
In the new study, 140,000 middle and high school students were studied based on information from 2004 through 2014. As per the results of the study, the decline of teen smoking was from 40 percent to 22. The teens who said they are still smokers dropped from 16 percent to 6. However, it was found that despite the drastic drop, smoking rates did not decline faster when e-cigarettes were introduced in 2007, U.S. News reported.
Lauren Dutra, the other lead researcher of the study, added they found many e-cigarette users are those who never smoked traditional cigarettes and were initially low-risk regarding starting to smoke. The number of children in the United States using e-cigarettes also rose during the period when the survey was made.
