ACCUMULATING EVIDENCE THAT YOUTH VAPING IS A GATEWAY TO CIGARETTES
Another study adds to the body of evidence that youth vaping predicts increased use of cigarettes
by Clark Miler
Published September 10, 2021
The study, accepted for publication in the journal Addiction, is summarized here –
concluding,
Conclusions. E-cigarette use by age 14 is associated with increased odds of tobacco cigarette initiation and frequent smoking at age 17 among British youth. Similarly, tobacco smoking at age 14 is associated with increased odds of both e-cigarette initiation and frequent use at age 17.
That conclusion adds to studies noted in recent posts here, and here, as well as evidence in earlier posts, consistently pointing to the predictable effects of remarkable surges in youth use of vaping devices to deliver nicotine.
The published surveys and longitudinal studies are congruent with epidemiological trends.
What is remarkable in this image is the change in slope represented by the bar graph, beginning in 2014.
The rate of decline of youth use of tobacco cigarettes clearly changed at that point, clearly slowed. The same year that youth use of nicotine by vaping began its remarkable increase.
From a previous post –
Grossly incompetent media reporting on research related to public health crises continues to expose vulnerable Americans to potentially lethal misinformation. Despite mounting mortality, public health, and social costs, there is no evidence of accountability, correction, or adaptive use of the overt failure of media watchdog and evaluative roles that helped fuel the lethal opioid crisis – a collaboration, as exposed here, in reporting by Sam Quinones in “Dreamland”, of medical, academic, research, and media institutions to market fabrications driving prescription of addictive opioids for common chronic pain, a non-medical condition, without evidence supporting effectiveness or safety.
Nothing has changed. In a recent egregious example, writers at Vox, the New York Times, other outlets in ignorance of the most basic of research interpretation errors promoted entirely unsupported conclusions promoting false confidence in effectiveness of use of electronic cigarettes or nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products as treatments for the highly lethal condition of compulsive use of tobacco by smoking. As in the media/pharma/medical industry collaboration that created the lethal opioid crisis, significant harm is predicted by the distortions and false messaging, by promotion of false confidence in unsupported treatments for smoking. The harms include tobacco-related mortality and morbidity that eclipse that related to other drugs, and harms due to smoking linked to incidence of chronic pain syndromes and exacerbated pain perception, both factors driving opioid misuse and the opioid crisis.
