[Science News] Are e-cigarettes a safe alternative to smoking?
What are e-cigarettes?
An e-cigarette is a long tube that usually resembles a cigarette, a cigar, a pipe, or a pen. Most are reusable, with replaceable and refillable cartridges, but some are disposable.
The first patent for a "smokeless, non-tobacco cigarette" was requested by Herbert A. Gilbert in 1963, but the current device did not appear until 2003.
The e-cigarette as we know it was invented by Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, working for Golden Dragon Holdings, now known as Ruyan. The company started exporting into major markets in 2005 to 2006. There are now over 460 different brands on the market.
How they work?
Risks?
While e-cigarettes may help some people quit, there is growing evidence that vaping may be harmful in some cases, and more harmful than avoiding smoking altogether.
Here are 10 reasons why the authorities are concerned:
1. Most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is addictive and triggers changes in the adolescent brain. It is hazardous during pregnancy as it can affect fetal development.
2. The aerosol contains solvents, flavorings, and toxicants, which the Surgeon General describes as either "harmful" or "potentially harmful."
3. E-cigarettes expose the lungs to different substances. One of these is dicetyl, which can cause "popcorn lung," a severe and irreversible lung disease.
4. Potentially fatal poisoning has resulted from accidentally swallowing and from inhaling c-cigarette liquid.
5. People who seek to quit smoking will stop using conventional and medically monitored methods of doing so.
6. Those who use or who have used e-cigarettes are less likely to stop smoking altogether.
7. Teens who use e-cigarette products are more likely to start using regular tobacco as well.
8. Continued use of nicotine can make other drugs, such as cocaine, more pleasurable.
9. The flavorings, the marketing, and the concept that it is not harmful all tempt teenagers to start vaping. There is concern that this increases the chance that they will smoke conventional cigarettes later.
10. Second-hand smoking is not eliminated by vaping, as vaping releases carcinogenic emissions.
In addition, experimental use of vaping materials may put teens at higher risk.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) point to the practice of "dripping," which involves inhaling solutions that are dripped directly onto the heater coil, as one such risk practice. Reasons include "to produce a stronger throat hit."
News about this
Vaping among teens spikes, luring new generation of kids into tobacco use.
Originally published December 17, 2018 at 6:03 pm Updated December 17, 2018 at 6:32 pm By Karen Kaplan - Los Angeles Times (TNS)
From: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/vaping-among-teens-spikes-luring-new-generation-of-kids-into-tobacco-use/
The proportion of U.S. high-school seniors who are vaping tobacco products nearly doubled in the past year, with more than 1 in 5 now saying they have vaped to get a hit of nicotine in the past 30 days, according to a new study.
The prevalence of nicotine vaping nearly doubled among 10th-graders as well, with nearly 1 in 6 using the electronic devices, researchers reported Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The findings suggest that the total number of high-school students using tobacco surged by 1.3 million between 2017 and 2018. “This increase was driven solely by nicotine vaping,” the researchers wrote.
The figures are based on a nationwide survey of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders who participated in the Monitoring the Future study, which has tracked teen use of tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs and other substances every year since 1975.
“The absolute increases in the prevalence of nicotine vaping among 12th-graders and 10th-graders are the largest ever recorded by Monitoring the Future in the 44 years that it has continuously tracked dozens of substances,” wrote a team led by Richard Miech, who leads the study at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
When electronic cigarettes first took hold among U.S. teens nearly a decade ago, public-health experts fretted that the slick devices would lure a new generation of kids into tobacco use.
The new report vindicates their fears.
Makers of vaping devices say their products are intended for use by adults, particularly smokers who would like to cut back on regular cigarettes by switching to a less-toxic alternative.
Juul, the company that now dominates the market, says its mission is to create “a world where fewer people use cigarettes, and where people who smoke cigarettes have the tools to reduce or eliminate their consumption entirely, should they so desire.”
Unlike traditional cigarettes, which burn tobacco, e-cigarettes use a battery to heat a liquid that is inhaled in an aerosol form. That liquid usually contains nicotine along with a mixture of chemicals and flavorings. Juul’s starter pack includes “pods” with flavors like mango, mint and crème.
Other e-liquid flavors seemed to be squarely aimed at kids, with packages that resembled frosted cookies and sour candies.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered online retailers to stop selling such products in September as part of a broad initiative to reduce teen vaping. At the time, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said vaping had produced an “epidemic of nicotine addiction” among America’s youth, with a prevalence that was “simply not tolerable.”
The Monitoring the Future researchers agreed that stronger action was needed to keep vaping devices beyond the reach of minors. Regulators will need to pay close attention to the fast-changing market and be ready to modify their policies if necessary, they said.
Miech applauded the FDA’s recent focus on kid-friendly flavors of vaping liquids. He also praised the agency for paying particular attention to Juul; the company’s devices have become so popular among middle- and high-school students that “juuling” is now synonymous with vaping.
The sharp increase in teen vaping was revealed in surveys completed by a nationally representative group of 13,850 students. The eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders completed their questionnaires at school during a normal class period.
The 2014 edition of the Monitoring the Future study was the first to report that vaping had replaced smoking as the most popular way for teens to consume tobacco. Even as other forms of tobacco use declined among students, e-cigarettes continuously bucked that trend.
Still, the increase in the past year was striking.
Among 12th-graders, the proportion of students who said they had vaped a nicotine product in the 30 days before they took the survey soared from 11 percent in 2017 to 20.9 percent in 2018. Among 10th-graders, it jumped from 8.2 percent in 2017 to 16.1 percent in 2018, and among eighth-graders it rose from 3.5 percent last year to 6.1 percent this year.
The survey also asked about vaping of liquids that contained “just flavoring,” to track students who may have consumed nicotine without realizing it. When both categories of vaping were combined, the researchers found that 25 percent of high-school seniors, 20.3 percent of sophomores and 9.7 percent of eighth-graders used e-cigarettes in 2018.
The use of any kind of nicotine-containing product — including traditional cigarettes, cigars and smokeless tobacco — by 12th-graders grew from 23.7 percent in 2017 to 28.9 percent in 2018.
“This increase was driven solely by nicotine vaping, given that the use of each of the other six nicotine products declined,” the researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In other words, the rise of vaping has reversed recent progress in turning kids away from nicotine, Miech said. Researchers have found that high-school students who vape are much more likely to become cigarette smokers than their classmates who don’t vape.
“These results suggest that vaping is leading youth into nicotine use and nicotine addiction, not away from it,” Miech said in a statement.
Students’ growing attraction to vaping extended to marijuana, which increased by at least 50 percent across the board. In 2018, 7.5 percent of seniors, 7 percent of sophomores and 2.6 percent of eighth-graders said they had vaped marijuana in the past 30 days.
Use of other illicit drugs — including cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, ecstasy and hallucinogens — did not change substantially in the past year, according to the survey results.
Although overall alcohol use didn’t change, high-school seniors were less likely to engage in binge drinking in 2018. The proportion of students who said they downed five or more drinks in a row at least once in the previous two weeks fell to 14 percent, from nearly 17 percent in 2017.
Monitoring the Future is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
Karen Kaplan
