Almost 70% of US school kids exposed to e-cigarette ads
16 Jan 2016
Almost seven in 10 US school kids are exposed to e-cigarette ads promoting the battery-powered vaping devices which used themes of rebellion, sex and independence, according to US health authorities.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unrestricted marketing of e-cigarettes had been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the number of vaping youths, adding to concerns about health dangers and a new generation of people addicted to nicotine.
From 2011 to 2014, current e-cigarette use among high school students surged from 1.5 per cent to 13.4 per cent, the CDC said.
Among middle school students, users went from 0.6 per cent to 3.9 per cent over the same period.
In 2014, e-cigarettes came to be used more commonly among youth than any other tobacco product, including cigarettes.
''The same advertising tactics the tobacco industry used years ago to get kids addicted to nicotine are now being used to entice a new generation of young people to use e-cigarettes,'' said CDC director Tom Frieden, thestar.com reported. ''I hope all can agree that kids should not use e-cigarettes.''
Over 18 million middle and high school students saw e-cigarette ads, according to the CDC Vital Signs report.
Meanwhile, according to a study by University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), electronic cigarettes might not actually help smokers quit smoking cigarettes.
In the study of smokers who used e-cigarettes, researchers found that adult smokers were actually 28 per cent less likely to stop smoking cigarettes, despite the highly-touted nature of the electronic version that was believed to help smokers quit.
''E-cigarettes should not be recommended as effective smoking cessation aids until there is evidence that, as promoted and used, they assist smoking cessation,'' Dr Sara Kalkhoran, a clinical fellow at the UCSF School of Medicine when the research was conducted, said in a statement.
