E-cigarettes breed more smokers than quitters
Vaping has led more people to start smoking real cigarettes than to stop, according to a study.
A lung-busting 168,000 American young adults who had never smoked took up the habit — and eventually got hooked — after first trying electronic cigarettes in 2015, according to data compiled by researchers at Dartmouth College’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center.
By contrast, only 2,070 cigarette-smoking adults used e-cigarettes to quit the same year, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.
Kids and teens who vape are three times more likely start smoking cigarettes than ones who don’t — due to advertising and packaging that includes fruity flavors, according to the study’s lead author Samir Soneji.
“Kids who vape are more likely to start smoking cigarettes—notably kids who were otherwise not at a high risk of starting to smoke,” Soneji, an associate professor of health policy at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, told Bloomberg News.
Researchers estimated that vaping over a one-year period would eventually lead to 1,510,000 years of lost American life, according to the study, which also used data from the 2014 Census, published literature and surveys about e-cigarette use.
In 2015, a total of 68 percent of Americans who smoked wanted to quit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.