NHS: E-cigarettes Don’t Promote Teen Smoking

The NHS Has Revealed  A New Study That Proves E-cigs Do Not Promote Teen Smoking

For a while now there has been many concerns about E-cigarettes and the effects they have on teens, there were fears of e-cigarettes becoming a gateway to smoking. Due to this it has pushed e-cigarettes back from receiving the publicity they deserve.

New studies have revealed results we have wanted for years and the results finally give us an answer to the question “Are e-cigarettes causing more teens to smoke?”

The new study takes data from over 200,000 teenagers aged 13-15 between the years of 1998 and 2015. The study was carried out to see if more teenagers are smoking e-cigarettes and to see if there was a spike in use.

The amount of teens that tried smoking for the first time fell from a huge 60% down to 19% at that time. Normal smoking also dropped from 19% down to a tiny 5%.

With these results we can see that only 25% of people think that it’s okay to start smoking while the 75% of people do not agree with it. It’s a huge change and an even bigger positive.

We can also tell from the data that vaping has not become the new smoking, and it has not been normalised among groups and teens.

Where did the results come from?

The study was conducted by many different universities such as Cardiff, Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh to name a few. The research was funded by the national Institute for health research. However not all questions were answered fully, they will be continuing to develop this research over the next decades.

A researcher said “”the first to test whether proliferation of e-cigarettes during a period of limited regulation led to changes in smoking trajectories as well as smoking attitudes among young people.

“Our results provide little evidence that re-normalisation of smoking occurred during this period.”

The NHS says that e-cigarettes hit popularity status in the UK around 2011; they even discovered that e-cigarettes are starting to be used more in the UK than traditional cigarettes. Adults who are ex-smokers are most likely to use e-cigarettes in attempt to not fall back into smoking again.

What were the results?

There were over 250,000 survey participants across years of the surveys existence. Smoking rates for 13-15 year olds declined from 1998 to 2015 with a 60% in 1998% to a staggering drop of 19% in 2015.

The views and perception of cigarettes had also changed; back in 1999 over 70% of teens thought it was okay to smoke. However only 27% of teens thought it was still okay to smoke in 2015. This means there was a drop of 43%.

The NHS says the following “Despite the decrease, when accounting for age, gender and other potential confounders like socioeconomic status, the decline in the rate of “ever smoking” (odds ratio [OR] 1.01, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.99 to 1.03) or “regular smoking” (OR 1.04, CI 1.00 to 1.08) fell short of statistical significance. But there was a significant decrease in the acceptability of smoking (OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.86 to 0.90).”

Conclusion

The study is extremely useful for providing evidence related to teen smoking. It seems that e-cigarettes do not lead to an increase in smoking; they result in a decrease of smoking which is why people use them. After the media has said hundreds of times that children and teens are at risk of smoking due to cigarettes. It turns out they are wrong and the most credible source comes from the NHS who are very trustworthy and the leading company in terms of health.