E-cigs, hookahs gain new hold with middle, high school kids
Use of novel tobacco products like e-cigarettes and hookahs is on the rise with middle school and high school kids, government researchers reported.
By JoNel Aleccia First published November 14th 2013, 12:11 pm
New kinds of tobacco products like e-cigarettes and hookahs are catching on fast with U.S. middle school and high school students, even as conventional cigarette use holds steady, government researchers said Thursday. It’s a worrisome rise, they say, because the products are often specifically targeted to teens as better choices than regular smokes.
“The increase in use of electronic cigarettes and hookah tobacco could be attributed to low price, an increase in marketing, availability and visibility of these products, and the perception that these products might be ‘safer’ alternatives to cigarettes,” officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in a new report.
But the new numbers confirm that although e-cigarettes are used by a tiny proportion of kids — 1.1 percent of middle-schoolers and 2.8 percent of high schoolers — use in the past 30 days jumped more than 83 percent among middle-school youth and 86 percent among high-schoolers between 2011 and 2012. And hookah use among high school students jumped 30 percent, to about 5.4 percent of the nearly 27,000 students included in the National Youth Tobacco Survey.
“It’s not like the bongs that old folks think of,” said Peter Hamm of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group. “You look at these numbers and you say 6 percent of high school kids are using hookah pipes?”
Not exactly. Many young teens are buying small, disposable hookahs that dispense tobacco in flavors like mocha latte, jungle juice and coconut twist. They buy them at the same convenience stores, gas stations and head shops that sell e-cigarettes — pencil-shaped devices that use a cartridge to deliver an aerosol mist containing nicotine with flavorings. They sell small cigars, too, which are also a troubling trend, the report found.
Cigar use climbed overall from 11.6 percent to 12.6 percent in a year among all high school students, but it jumped from 11.7 percent to 16.7 percent in black kids, more than double the rate since 2009, the report warned.
Nearly 17 percent of all high school boys in 2012 used cigars in the past month, about equal to the proportion that smoked cigarettes.
“The report raises a red flag about newer tobacco products,” said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement. “Cigars and hookah tobacco are smoked tobacco — addictive and deadly. We need effective action to protect our kids from addiction to nicotine.”
The Food and Drug Administration regulates most tobacco products, but not e-cigarettes, although the agency is pushing for oversight there, too.
Overall, nearly 7 percent of middle-school kids and 23 percent of high-school kids used tobacco of any kind in 2012, figures that dropped slightly, but not significantly, from the previous year.
Nearly 90 percent of adult smokers in the U.S. began smoking by age 18, the CDC said. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S. and it kills 440,000 people — about 1,200 a day — every year. More than 2,000 teens and young adults become daily smokers every day, the CDC said.
But tobacco companies work hard to reach that market, Hamm said.
“If you’re not addicted to nicotine by the time you’re 21, the odds are against you getting addicted,” said Hamm. “They have to get them while they’re young or they don’t get them at all.”
For their part, tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds of Winston-Salem, N.C., say that they market their products to consenting adults who understand the risks of smoking.
“Minors should never use tobacco products and adults who do not use or have quit using tobacco products should not start,” the company says on its website.
JoNel Aleccia is a senior health reporter with NBC News. Reach her on Twitter at @JoNel_Aleccia or send her an email.
The percentage of U.S. high school students who say they have tried e-cigarettes has doubled in the past year to 10 percent, government researchers reported Thursday.
They say it’s a troubling trend as no one knows yet how safe e-cigarettes are, although they are often marketed as a safer alternative to regular cigarettes.
“E-cigarette experimentation and recent use doubled among U.S. middle and high school students during 2011–2012, resulting in an estimated 1.78 million students having ever used e-cigarettes as of 2012,” researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration wrote in a report.
“Moreover, in 2012, an estimated 160,000 students who reported ever using e-cigarettes had never used conventional cigarettes. This is a serious concern because the overall impact of e-cigarette use on public health remains uncertain.”
While the numbers of kids smoking e-cigarettes aren’t huge yet, the fact that they are doubling so quickly is a bad sign, said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC Office on Smoking and Health.
“I think the thing of most concern is the trend,” McAfee told NBC News. “There aren’t many things where we see a doubling in one year. We are not talking about adults here. The absolute numbers in middle school are small but they are doubling. We think it is something we need to get ahead of.”
And, health experts say, tobacco companies are obviously marketing e-cigarettes to young people. “With flavors like bubble gum and cotton candy, e-cigarettes are very clearly being made and marketed in ways that appeal to children,” said Paul Billings of the American Lung Association.
“These data show the urgent need for oversight of these products,” Billings added the FDA doesn’t regulate e-cigarettes but wants to.
Just 2.8 percent of high school students say they’ve used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, which suggests many are experimenting but not smoking them steadily - yet. "Nicotine is a highly addictive drug,” says CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden.
E-cigarettes are pencil-shaped devices that use a cartridge to deliver an aerosol mist containing nicotine with flavorings. It’s propelled by propylene glycol or glycerol. “Potentially harmful constituents also have been documented in some e-cigarette cartridges, including irritants, genotoxins (which can damage DNA), and animal carcinogens,” FDA says in a statement on its website. http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm172906.htm
More high school students are trying e-cigarettes, the CDC and FDA report
They are pricey - an e-cigarette product ranges from $10 to $120, depending on how many charges it provides. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of brands.
CDC and FDA researchers looked at answers from the 2011 and 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey, a pencil-and-paper questionnaire given to students in grades 6-12 at their schools.
The data show that 76.3 percent of middle and high school students who used e-cigarettes within the past 30 days also smoked conventional cigarettes in the same time. And about 20 percent of the middle school students who had tried e-cigarettes said they have never tried conventional cigarettes.
The researchers worry that e-cigarettes might act as a gateway to conventional tobacco products. “About 90 percent of all smokers begin smoking as teenagers,” said McAfee. “We now have young movie stars being paid to appear in ads on television for the first time in 40 years doing something that looks to all intents and purposes like smoking.”
McAfee fears the promotion may undo years of work marginalizing smoking, banning it from workplaces and restaurants and making it an unpopular habit.
Nicotine itself may also be harmful, McAfee added. “We are particularly concerned about adolescents being exposed to nicotine in any form because it has the potential to impact their brain development,” he said.
About 20 percent of Americans smoke, down from 40 percent in the 1960s. About 18 percent of high school students have smoked one or more cigarettes in the past month. Earlier this year the CDC reported the number of adults who have tried e-cigarettes has also doubled, to 21 percent, in the past year.
Members of Congress said they'd work to support tougher regulation of the electronic cigarettes.
“Electronic cigarettes as marketed today – with flavors like bubblegum and strawberry – are targeted at young people with the very clear intent of creating a new generation of smokers," Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.
"Without question, tobacco companies are using the same despicable tactics with e-cigarettes that they used in previous decades with traditional cigarettes to lure youth down a path of nicotine addiction and eventual death. Efforts to reduce tobacco use among youth must be redoubled, and include more aggressive action by the FDA. "
CDC says cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States, killing 443,000 people a year.
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