E-cigarette ads make one desire tobacco

Watching e-cigarette television advertisements can make people crave for tobacco, regardless of whether they did or did not smoke before.

Researchers Erin K. Maloney, Ph.D. and Joseph N. Cappella, Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania studied more than 800 daily, intermittent, and former smokers who watched e-cigarette advertising, and who then took a survey to determine smoking urges, intentions, and behaviors.

The scientists observed a trend that more daily smokers who viewed ads with vaping smoked a tobacco cigarette during the experiment than daily smokers who viewed ads without vaping and daily smokers who did not view ads. Over 35 percent of the daily smokers in the condition that showed vaping reported having a tobacco cigarette during the study versus 22 percent of daily smokers who saw ads without vaping, and about 23 percent of daily smokers who did not see any advertising.

They wrote that "given the sophistication of cigarette marketing in the past and the exponential increase in advertising dollars allotted to e-cigarette promotion in the past year, it should be expected that advertisements for these products created by big tobacco companies will maximize smoking cues in their advertisements, and if not regulated, individuals will be exposed to much more e-cigarette advertising on a daily basis."

The findings are reported in the journal Health Communication.