A study recently published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research has confirmed what several tobacco harm reduction experts have been pointing out since the beginning of the teen vaping hysteria: teens who take up vaping will not move on to smoking cigarettes. Rather, had they not taken up vaping, they would have most likely taken up smoking instead.
Conducted by researchers in the US, where panic surrounding teen vaping is ever-expanding, study results indicated that those who had ever used an e-cigarette were approximately 17 times more likely to have ever smoked or be currently smoking regular cigarettes. Similarly, respondents who had never used e-cigarettes were 22 times more likely to have ever smoked and 16 times more likely to be currently smoking.
The study concluded that e-cigarette use does not seem to be associated with current and continued smoking, rather the link between the two stems from the shared risk factors.
“My study accounts for this pre-existing propensity to use tobacco using advanced statistics and shows that e-cigarette use has little to no effect on conventional smoking. Further research should be conducted to handle this issue very carefully, and current recommendations and policies about e-cigarettes should be re-evaluated,” said study author, Arielle Selya.