Electronic cigarettes, nicotine use trends and use initiation ages among US adolescents from 1999 to 2018.

What Was Tested

This observational study looks at Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Recent nicotine use trends raise concerns that electronic cigarettes (ECs) may act as a gateway to cigarettes among adolescents.

The aims of this study were to examine prevalence trends of exclusive EC use, exclusive cigarette use and dual use to determine the corresponding ages of initiation and to investigate hypothetical trends in total nicotine use and cigarette use in the absence of ECs among US adolescents.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were children and teenagers, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

Observational study using data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) to statistically model trends in the prevalences of each user group and their initiation ages.

Projections from counterfactual models based on data from 1999 to 2009 (before EC introduction) were compared with actual trends based on data from 1999 to 2018.

Rigorous error analyses were applied, including Theil proportions.

Adolescents aged 12-17 years who were established exclusive cigarette users (≥ 100 cigarettes smoked and ≤ 100 days vaped), established exclusive EC users (< 100 cigarettes smoked and > 100 days vaped) and established dual users (≥ 100 cigarettes smoked and > 100 days vaped), based on cumulative life-time exposure (n ≈ 12 500-31 000 per wave).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Adolescent Behavior, Age Factors, Cigarette Smoking, Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, Nicotine, Prevalence and Surveys and Questionnaires.

Author keywords: Adolescents, cigarettes, diversion, electronic cigarettes and gateway.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2020 (Addiction (Abingdon, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.