E-cigarettes less likely to encourage teens to smoke

A new study has demonstrated that lot of teenagers give it a try to smoke try e-cigarettes, however, only few become regular users.

The study conducted at Cardif University studied 1601 children aged 10-11 and 9055 children aged 11-16 about their use of e-cigarettes.

Use of e-cigarettes at least once was more common than having smoked a conventional cigarette among all age groups, except the oldest (15-16 year olds).

Some 5.8 percent of 10-11 year olds had tried e-cigarettes, compared to only 1.6 percent having smoked tobacco, while a sizeable proportion (12.3 percent) of 11-16 year olds said they had used e-cigarettes, irrespective of gender, ethnic background, or family affluence.

According to the study, only 1.5 percent (125) of those aged 11-16 said they used e-cigarettes regularly defined as at least once a month and this included 0.3 percent of those who claimed they had never smoked conventional cigarettes.

Dr Graham Moore who led the research said that while experimentation with e-cigarettes is becoming common among youth in Wales, these figures suggest that e-cigarettes are unlikely to make a major direct contribution to adolescent nicotine addiction at present.

The strong relationship between current smoking and e-cigarette use suggested that teens were not using these products to help them quit smoking.

Moore added that although their study had provided an insight into the use of e-cigarettes, differences across studies in the questions used to measure e-cigarettes present something of a challenge for research in this area.

The study is published in the online journal BMJ Open.