RESEARCH UPDATE:
BOOMING VAPE (E-CIGARETTE) USE AMONG YOUTH ASSOCIATED WITH HARM NOT BENEFIT INCLUDING REVERSAL OF LONGSTANDING DECLINES IN TOBACCO CIGARETTE SMOKING
Predicted vaping outcomes due to direct link established from nicotine to diabetes reported in new research
By Clark Miller
Published July 10, 2019
Updated April 14, 2021; March 9, 2022
Accumulating evidence points to runaway rates of “vaping” of nicotine among youth, now characterized as posing unknown risks and as an epidemic warranting investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who last year announced plans for promotion of e-cigarettes as harm reduction, a strategy endorsed in the nation’s leading medical journal. And is increasing rates of youth who will smoke tobacco.
Right.
Endorsement of the FDA plan in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) cited a small downward shift in vaping by youth over just one year- 2016. But as described in new reports in the online news source Vox and increasingly elsewhere, more recent data point to booming use of e-cigarettes among youth, that use increasing likelihood of young people starting to smoke (tobacco) cigarettes.
New research published in the British Medical Journal is consistent with a body of preceding evidence and trends in use of e-cigarettes (vaping) among youth and prevalence of smoking of tobacco cigarettes: congruent evidence of increasing nicotine dependence from vaping of nicotine preparations, positive association of vaping with use of tobacco by smoking (“smoking”), and leveling or reversal to increase of longstanding declines in smoking by youth.
The study compared vaping and smoking prevalence in 2017 and 2018 for 16 to 19 year-olds in the U.S., Canada, and England.
Results varied, pointed to notable increases in prevalence of vaping, and were consistent with a causal role for vaping in changes in tobacco smoking for this age group, rather than providing a harm-reducing protective effect.
In Canada, vaping prevalence increased as did tobacco smoking, following years of decline.
In the U.S. tobacco smoking prevalence did not change with significant increases in vaping prevalence, a clinically and epidemiologically significant result representing a change following years of steady decline in youth smoking.
From the bmj study –
The increase in smoking among Canadian adolescents raises important questions about the association between vaping and smoking behavior. After several decades of steady decline, smoking among 15 to 19 year olds did not change significantly between 2015 and 2017, and no other national estimates are available for 2018. (14) If the increase in smoking prevalence in Canada was directly related to an increase in vaping, similar increases in smoking would be expected among US adolescents, who reported a similar rise in vaping; however, no statistically significant changes in smoking were observed between 2017 and 2018 in the US. Estimates from the current study are closer to the 0.5% increase in past 30 day smoking observed in the National Youth Tobacco Survey study (16, 17) than the 0.8% decrease recorded in the Monitoring the Future study in 2018. (18) The greater increase in smoking in Canada might reflect emergent trends leading up to the legalization of non-medical cannabis in October 2018. Cannabis use increased among Canadian adolescents in 2018, consistent with Canada’s benchmark survey, which also found an increase in cannabis use among adolescents in the six months before its legalization. (28) Given that smoking is the primary mode of cannabis use, and some users mix cannabis with tobacco (although to a lesser extent in North America than in Europe), it is plausible that greater cannabis use could increase cigarette smoking. However, supplemental tests indicated that the increase in smoking and vaping prevalence in Canada remained statistically significant after adjusting for cannabis use. Therefore, without discounting the possibility of common upstream determinants, the increases in vaping and smoking in Canada from 2017 to 2018 were not directly related to increased cannabis use over the same period.
Results from England pointed to slight increase in prevalence of tobacco smoking and no change in prevalence of vaping, interpretation qualified by limitations in England on nicotine content of liquids used in e-cigarettes compared to tobacco cigarettes and associated responses in user behaviors.
BELOW – 2022: NEW RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS PREDICTED OUTCOMES FROM VAPING BASED ON KNOWN DIRECT LINKS FROM NICOTINE TO DIABETES
But first,
Q: How did vaping go from JAMA-endorsed “harm reduction” to FDA epidemic?
A: Predictably
As outlined in a previous post –
the FDA/Medical Industry plan and endorsement for vaping as effective harm reduction relied on an irresponsibly limited data base; was not grounded in a research base adequate to support confidence in vaping behavior as reducing use of tobacco overall or confidence in vaping health effects as significantly benign compared to those for tobacco; and ignored the direct links among nicotine, risk of onset of type 2 diabetes, and increasing rates of diabetes among youth.
Nicotine, an addictive substance, may be delivered in vape devices in concentrations as high or higher than in regular cigarettes. The delivery and behavioral nature of vaping and smoking predict higher potential for conditioned psychological dependence. To a greater degree than other substances, the bioactive delivery of nicotine vaped or smoked, and the comforting behavioral ritual, are repeated many times each day, with each inhalation, up to hundreds of times each day. That is, the cycle of felt need or compulsion to deliver the mood-altering substance, its delivery by inhalation – and the rewarding sensory/mood alteration are repeated many to hundreds of times each day. That’s a lot of positive reinforcement of the behavior.
From research and findings linked to in this post,
accumulating evidence heightens concerns pointing to unknown risks of vaping for adults and especially youth, and known risks in the context of apparent rapidly increasing use of vaping among youth.
For example, teens who start vaping are more likely to continue than to quit, and more likely to start smoking tobacco; vaping may not help cigarette smokers quit; and surveyed, non-randm samples of youth and adults who have started vaping have indicated little motivation to stop.
And congruent with the new evidence in the British Medical Journal pointing to a gateway rather than proactive link from vaping to cigarette use and nicotine dependence – illustrated here, U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data appear to point to an uptick in teen use of cigarettes in 2018 (from 2017) by 7%, after decades of decline concurrent with the sharp upturn in vaping over past years.
Prior Canadian public health figures – for e-cigarette and cigarette use among Canadians 15 years of age and older – appear to model the alarming trends. Prevalence of that population in Canada having ever used e-cigarettes increased by 15% in 2017 compared to 2015. And concurrently with the increased use of vaping, instead of the desired and industry-promoted projection of decreased cigarette use related to vaping, instead cigarette use increased, also by 15%, over the same period. As in the U.S., cigarette use had apparently prior to the upturn been in decline, “In 2017, the overall prevalence of smoking among Canadians aged 15 and up was 15 per cent, representing 4.6 million current smokers, an increase from 2015 when it hit an all-time low of 13 per cent.”
It appears that France has joined other populations for the alarming and predictable trend. Vaping there has increased among youth since its introduction and marketing began a decade or so ago.
Noted in this 2017 report, in 2016 more than half (53%) of French 17-year-olds had tried vaping, and 2 percent had become daily users. And their use of tobacco cigarettes increased, for 17-year-olds, “the downward trend in daily smoking observed between 2000 and 2008 reversed, with a slight increase over the 2008 – 2014 period.”
The delivery and behavioral nature of vaping and smoking predict higher potential for conditioned psychological dependence . . . That is, the cycle of felt need or compulsion to deliver the mood-altering substance, its delivery by inhalation – and the rewarding sensory/mood alteration are repeated many to hundreds of times each day. That’s a lot of positive reinforcement of the behavior.
Remarkably, the esteemed Academies and Medical Industry reviews
and recommendations along with media analyses of results, policy, and implications for public health have not yet addressed the concurrent public health epidemics directly impacted by proposed use of an FDA vaping promotion campaign –childhood and adult diabetes epidemic fueled partly by nicotine use.
The missing, potentially lethal, epidemic links – missing from the scientific reviews, medical industry recommendations, and media accounts- are the:
1) direct effects of nicotine on risk of onset of type 2 diabetes and worsening of diabetes,
“A meta-analysis found that current smokers had a 45% increased risk of developing diabetes compared with nonsmokers.”
“Nicotine, acknowledged as the major pharmacologically active chemical in tobacco, is responsible for the association between cigarette smoking and development of diabetes.”
That’s not good.
The congruence of those trends with the accumulating evidence pointing to a gateway rather than proactive link from vaping to cigarette use and nicotine dependence appears to form another disturbing example of medical/pharmacologic fixes for non-medical problems, predicting harm.
2022: NEW RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS PREDICTED OUTCOMES FROM VAPING BASED ON KNOWN DIRECT LINKS FROM NICOTINE TO DIABETES
From a recent post, published March 9, 2022 –
Scientists at one of America’s leading medical research universities warn that an “important” new study should serve as a serious wake-up call for e-cigarette smokers.
Frequent vaping can increase a person’s risk of developing high blood sugar — known in medical circles as prediabetes — which is reversible, but often leads to full-blown type 2 diabetes and a host of serious health problems later in life, according to the report published Wednesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“Our study demonstrated a clear association of prediabetes risk with the use of e-cigarettes,” said lead study author Shyam Biswal, an environmental health science professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, SWNS reported.
Biswal continued, “With both e-cigarette use and prevalence of prediabetes dramatically on the rise in the past decade, our discovery that e-cigarettes carry a similar risk to traditional cigarettes with respect to diabetes is important for understanding and treating vulnerable individuals.”
. . .
They found that those who vape — a popular pastime among teens and 20-somethings — are 22% more likely to develop prediabetes than those who had never partaken. Meanwhile, traditional cigarette users were 40% more likely to suffer from the condition.
“In the case of cigarette smoking, nicotine has a detrimental effect on insulin action, and it appears that e-cigarettes may also have the same effect,” said Biswal, adding that participants who vaped were found to have worse mental and physical health than nonsmokers.
The link between electronic tobacco dispensers and prediabetes is still unclear. However, nicotine — which is found in both e-cigarettes and traditional cancer sticks — is known to spike blood sugar levels. And, while prediabetes is reversible, it is a precursor to type 2 diabetes, a chronic condition that can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and other serious complications.
That’s right, nicotine
has a direct effect on insulin biochemistry and would whether administered by smoking combustible cigarettes or by vaping. Nicotine is nicotine.
That all sounds alarming, on top of multiple, worsening lethal public health threats, and especially in the context of runaway use of nicotine by youth by vaping and a youth obesity epidemic already raising concerns about increasing incidence of diabetes.
Who saw that coming?
I did, at A Critical Discourse, in multiple posts over the past 4 years including this post in August of 2018 noting the direct contribution of nicotine to risk of onset of diabetes, then repeatedly over the following years, like here, and here, and here, some 6 to 10 posts in all noting the links among nicotine – diabetes – youth vaping epidemic.
That seems like a public health concern worth the investigative and reporting attention of American journalism over the past 4 years, while vaping boomed among adults and youth. To be fair, American media have been distracted, focused on other reporting related to vaping – as described here, and here, here, here, here, and here.
