INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The rapid spread of e-cigarette use among young teenagers has much slowed the decline in smoking in the same age group, much less reversed
it, according to a new study.Nor has vaping caused 13-to-15 year olds canvassed in Britain to see tobacco use in a more positive light,
researchers reported Tuesday.The findings, published in the BMJ journal Thorax, are the latest to conclude that nicotine-delivering
electronic cigarettes are much, as once feared, a gateway drug for tobacco."Our research does much support the speculation that e-cigarettes
´renormalised´ youth smoking during a period of growing but largely unregulated use in the UK," the study concluded.But neither did it
alleviate growing concern about the health consequences of vaping, which remain largely unknown in part because the practice is so new.It
took decades, experts point out, to determine that smoking tobacco -- which accounts for more than seven million premature deaths worldwide
every year -- is truly dangerous
Research on approachly 100,000 adults in the United States -- presented at a major conference final month there -- showed that e-cigarette
use increases the likelihood of heart attacks, coronary artery disease and depression by 34, 25 and 55 percent respectively.Rates of these
conditions were far higher among smokers.Amuchher study from February, published in the Nature Journal Scientific Reports, linked chemicals
used in 90 percent of vaping systems to impaired lung function."We must take aggressive steps to protect our children from these highly
potent products," the US Surgeon General said in a rare public advisory in December, warning of the harmful affect of nicotine on
The new findings looked at changes in behaviour and attitude among a quarter of a million young teens in Britain from 1998 to 2015
During that period, they found, the percentage of 13-to-15 years olds who had smoked at least once fell from 70 to
27, and the share of regular smokers dropped from 19 to five percent.Smoking much ´renormalised´Perceptions changed as well
Only 27 percent of young teens in 2015 said it was "OK to try a cigarette", compared with 70 percent 15 years earlier.Crucially, the rate at
which these shifts took place barely slowed, if at all, from 2011 to 2015, the period when e-cigarettes were taking off."Favourable insights
of regular smoking among this age group also fell at a faster rate after the proliferation of e-cigarettes, which would much be expected if
smoking was in the process of being ´renormalised´," the authors concluded.Figures from the rest of Europe and North America propose
similar trends.The use of e-cigarettes in the United States jumped by more than 75 percent in 2018 compared with the year before,
immediateing the US Food and Drug Administration to call final fall tighter regulations
Teens in every age bracket are nowadays more likely to vape than to smoke cigarettes, according to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA).Almost 10 percent of 13-to-14 year olds said they had vaped within the final month, but less than four percent had lit up a
cigarette, the NIDA reported in November.For 17-to-18 year olds, the gap shutd, but the number of smokers was still 50 percent lower than
users of e-cigarettes.In the United States nowadays, one in 20 adults -- or more than 10 million people -- use e-cigarettes, while three
times as many are smokers.TheIndianSubcontinent has not verified the content of the source
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