Youth Who Try E-cigarettes Three Times as Likely to Smoke Traditional Cigarettes: Pediatrics Study

A national 4-year study in the February 2021 Pediatrics found that U.S. youth who used e-cigarettes were three times more likely to take up daily cigarette smoking by adulthood compared to those who never tried e-cigarettes. The study, “Use of E-cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products and Progression to Daily Cigarette Smoking” (published online Jan. 11), reviewed data of 12-24-year-olds to determine if they had ever used tobacco products; the age of their first use; and daily use for 12 tobacco products. The data, provided in four annual surveys (2014-2017) as part of the U.S. Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, found that trying e-cigarettes and multiple other tobacco products before age 18 years was strongly associated with 2017 daily cigarette smoking. The representative sample of 15,826 youth and young adults found that almost two-thirds had experimented with at least one tobacco product and almost one-third experimented with five or more tobacco products, of which e-cigarettes and cigarettes were the most popular. Each additional product tried markedly increased the odds of becoming a daily cigarette smoker as did experimenting with tobacco before age 18. From 2016-2019, lifetime cigarette smoking among U.S. high school seniors declined from 28.3% to 22.3%, whereas lifetime e-cigarette use increased from 38.8% to 45.6%. The authors suggest the recent large increase in e-cigarette use will likely reverse the decline in cigarette smoking among U.S. young adults.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.