Written by Quentin Fottrel via Market Watch
The number of middle and high-school students who have tried so-called “e-cigarettes” has tripled in the past three years, and is doubling the number of youth who say they will begin smoking regular cigarettes too, according to a new survey.
The study from the 2011-2013 National Youth Tobacco Survey, released Monday in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, showed that the number of middle and high-schoolers who’ve tried e-cigarettes, but never conventional cigarettes, shot up to 263,000 in 2013, up from 79,000 in 2011. Even more significant, almost half of those kids surveyed said they planned to smoke regular cigarettes within a year.
The study is likely to add pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to begin regulating those tobacco-like products.
Anti-smoking advocates like the American Lung Association said that study shows “e-cigarette use among youth will be kids on a lifelong addition to nicotine and tobacco products,” according to Harold Wimmer, national president of the ALA. He called on the Obama administration and the FDA to finalize new regulation to control use of e-cigarettes by the end of 2014 “so that we do not lose another generation of kids to tobacco-caused death and disease.”
Federal laws prohibit traditional cigarettes from being marketed to people under 18 years old, but there are no federal limits for e-cigarette makers. Unlike tobacco products, e-cigarettes carry no child-warning labels.
Moreover, major tobacco companies Altria Group MO, +0.21% , Reynolds American RAI, +0.21% and Lorillard LO, +0.30% have all started producing e-cigarettes and recent e-cigarette commercials feature TV personality Jenny McCarthy and actor Stephen Dorff.
