Though there's no shortage of awareness about the risks of tobacco use these days, stopping people from starting in the first place remains a concern. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows why.
The use of e-cigarettes is on the rise, according to a new report from the CDC. High schoolers that reported using an e-cigarette within the last 30 days has increased from 2.8 percent from the 2012 survey to 4.5 percent in 2013. The percentage of high school students that said they tried an e-cigarette for the first time also rose from 10 percent to 12 percent. These are the results of the CDC's National Youth Tobacco Survey, which gathers responses from roughly 20,000 students every year.
E-cigarettes still contain nicotine and are addictive. However, they don't burn, instead producing a vapor, which means that less harmful chemicals are released. Some researchers say that this makes e-cigarettes less dangerous to smoke, although that claim has been debated.
The 2014 Surgeon General's report found that nicotine can have adverse effects on adolescent brain development. For that reason, using nicotine in any form, be it in a regular or electronic cigarette, is "unsafe," the CDC said in a statement.
More teens may be tempted to use e-cigarettes because of their marketing and packaging. The products are often advertised on TV and come in a variety of colors, which may make them more appealing to teens, Brian King, an epidemiologist with the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, told The Wall Street Journal. Most states also allow e-cigarettes to be smoked indoors, unlike regular cigarettes, which may make teens think it's more normal to smoke them. King suggested lowering the price of tobacco products to dissuade teens from using them.
Though it's unclear whether or not teens are actually giving up traditional tobacco products for e-cigarettes, some studies have had alarming results. Researchers from the Center for Tobacco Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco found that teens who used e-cigarettes were more likely to try tobacco cigarettes and become regular smokers. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine called e-cigarettes a "gateway drug" for nicotine addiction and possibly other drugs, too. A CDC survey published in August found that youth who had never smoked regular cigarettes who used e-cigarettes were almost twice as likely to intend to smoke conventional cigarettes.
The CDC's report also found that using tobacco products is still quite common among high school students. Almost 23 percent of high school students said they currently use a tobacco product. Out of the high school students surveyed, 46 percent of them said they had used a tobacco product at least once in their lifetime.
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