Are e-cigarettes encouraging conventional cigarette smoking in adolescents?

Analyzing data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics debates whether e-cigarettes could be encouraging the use of conventional cigarettes in adolescents.

Recently, Medical News Today ran a feature examining the boom in popularity of e-cigarettes, which some experts believe will become more widely used than conventional cigarettes by the next decade.

In that feature, we also debated the conflicting data on e-cigarettes from scientific studies and looked at how these - currently unregulated - products might be controlled in the future.

Many observers have commented that e-cigarettes are sold and promoted in a way that is similar to how cigarettes were aggressively marketed in the 1950s and 1960s, before cigarette advertising was banned from television and radio.

But in addition to these traditional media, e-cigarettes have a strong advertising presence on the internet, where they can be purchased.

This raises concerns over the accessibility of these devices to children. E-cigarettes are also sold in strawberry, licorice and chocolate flavors. These kind of flavorings are banned in conventional cigarettes in the US because they appeal to children.

The National Youth Tobacco Survey 2011-12

The new study analyzed National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) data from 2011 and 2012 to see what the relationship is between e-cigarette use and conventional cigarette smoking in American adolescents.