The AMA cited the lack of evidence about the short- and long-term health impact of e-cigarettes and vaping products in making the call for a total ban. The doctors’ group said a separate health issue also prompted its action — the recent U.S. outbreak of lung illnesses linked to vaping. Most of those sickened said they vaped THC, the high-inducing ingredient in marijuana, not nicotine. Officials believe a thickening agent used in black market THC vaping products may be a culprit.
About 2,100 people have gotten sick; 42 have died.
“It’s simple, we must keep nicotine products out of the hands of young people.” Dr. Patrice Harris, AMA’s president, said in a statement.
The AMA has previously sought bans on e-cigarette flavors and ads. At the same time, some states, municipalities and corporations are seeking to limit the products, with Massachusetts lawmakers set to vote on Wednesday on a bill that would ban flavored tobacco. That measure is aimed at reducing vaping among teens, with researchers finding that 5 million children and teens are now using the products.
Yeah, I’m thinking the AMA position might be a bit overly strong. I’m all for banning or at least regulating ecig advertising and banning the sugary flavours. But a total ban would leave millions of vapors, many of whom legitimately use vaping to get off cigarettes, with no other option but to run back to cigarettes for their nicotine fix.
“Doctors at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, where the teen was treated, said they had never seen such scarring on someone’s lungs from vaping.”
“‘This is an evil that I haven’t faced before,” Dr. Hassan Nemeh, a thoracic specialist at Henry Ford Health System, said during a news conference.”
Wow, that’s some pretty hairy quotes. It really brings it home just how destructive the vaping illnesses have been. More than 40 people have died now and more than 2,000 have been sickened. Nemeh urges kids to stop vaping all products, not just THC products.
According to the story, vaping of both nicotine and THC products has caused the thousands of deaths around the country from vaping (and a few dozen deaths). I do believe it is mostly THC products being sold on the street.
Here’s an interesting aspect to the story. Scientists think they might have tracked down the cause of the illnesses — at least one of them. It’s Vitamin E acetate, which is being used as a diluting agent in THC vapes. Vitamin E acetate, a synthetic form of Vitamin E, has been found in half of the 419 THC vaping fluids tested by the Food and Drug Administration.
CDC recommends that people should not use e-cigarette, or vaping, products that contain THC, particularly from informal sources like friends, or family, or in-person or online dealers. Until the relationship of vitamin E acetate and lung health is better understood, vitamin E acetate should not be added to e-cigarette, or vaping, products.
A couple of contradictory articles here about what appears to be the same survey. Took some research, but I got to the bottom of what these numbers really mean. This CDC graphic is REALLY helpful. I recommend clicking on it to see it full size.
According to U.S. News and World Report, a new Centers for Disease Control survey showed that teen smoking rate has dropped to 9 percent, while teens are also doing fewer drugs, having less sex and … drinking less milk?
OK, the milk part was weird. The point being more kids are drinking sodas and energy drinks.
However, a story from NBC News, which appears to cite the same CDC study, says that teen use of tobacco products has dropped from 24 percent in 2011 to 20 percent today — but that 13 percent of that is from cigarettes, with the rest vaping.
This is mostly good, if not confusing news. Well, more good than bad. I see a glass half-full from the fact that when I started looking at these CDC surveys 10-12 years ago, the teen smoking rate was pushing 30 percent. Now, it’s somewhere between 9-13 percent.
The glass half-empty is that there are still kids getting addicted to nicotine, just from a different delivery system. E-cigs aren’t as bad as cigarettes, but they aren’t 100 percent benign either. It’s best if kids don’t get addicted to nicotine … period. Regardless of the delivery system.
So, I decided to look at the CDC survey directly. I HATE contradictory information like this when different reporters see different results when they look at different part of the same study.
Here’s MY take on the CDC survey (these surveys are done every two years, by the way). A little more in-depth and a little more carefully worded than the two articles:
There is something there that says 8.8 percent of teens have smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days, so that’s where they got 9 percent.
Total number of teens using a tobacco product is 19.6 percent. That’s e-cigs, smokeless tobacco, cigarettes, cigars and hookahs combined.
percentage of kids using e-cigs is 11.7 percent
There is something that says total percentage of “combustible” tobacco products — that’s cigarettes, cigars and hookahs — is 12.9 percent. I’d be willing to bet most “cigars” being smoked by kids are those Swisher Sweets.
So, it appears that both articles are right. It also showed to me that there’s some overlap between kids who smoke and kids that vape — that’s why 11.7 percent + 12.9 percent = 19.6 percent. The articles aren’t clear about that. There is a category in the study that says, “more than two types” of tobacco products. That’s roughly about 10 percent of teens. And that’s why 11.7 + 12.9 = 19.6.
Anyway, the graphic I included with this post makes it MUCH clearer. According to that graphic, the news is generally good, though it could be better.
Teen vaping has actually dropped since it hit its peak in 2014. Yayy, I’m actually heartened by that, though I’d like to see it drop faster. Total nicotine use via either e-cigs or cigarettes has dropped since 2014.
In 2014, roughly 17 percent of teens were using e-cigs, that’s now down below 12 percent.
Total nicotine uses by teens in 2014 was just above 25 percent. That figure is just under 20 percent in 2017. Smoking is down a ton, from about 18 percent (any combustible) in 2014 to 13 percent in 2017. Cigarettes are down from about 11 percent in 2014 to just under 9 percent in 2017.
I don’t know if the CDC broke down the difference between cigarettes and cigars before. I never noticed it before this year’s survey, and I’ve been perusing these CDC survey reports for a decade. But, it’s good to have the whole story. A lot more teens smoking cigars and cigarillos than I thought.
Never heard of these things until a couple of weeks ago. I’m still not 100 percent sure what the big deal is about them.
It sounds to be something like Vaal, from the original Star Trek and reminds of an old SNL skit about some feminine product where the whole point of the skit was “what is it?”
A Juul is apparently a new kind of e-cigarette that looks a hell of a lot like a flash drive for a laptop. And, apparently, in fact, they can be charged by plugging them into a laptop.
Anyway, the New York Times thought it was a big enough deal to do a huge article about them.
Resembling a flash drive, Juul conveys a sense of industry — you’re Juuling into your MacBook Air while you are cramming for your test on Theodore Dreiser and thinking about trigonometry — and it is so easy to conceal that, as one mother explained to me, she failed to notice that her daughter was vaping in the back seat of the car as she was driving.
It’s basically just the latest “hip” e-cig. And this is one of the issues I have with e-cigs … is they keep trying to pass themselves off as “hip” and the “latest thing.” And kids love stuff that’s “hip” and the “latest thing.”
The company’s position that Juul is intended strictly for “adult” smokers as its website repeatedly indicates, is belied by the menu of flavors in which the nicotine pods are offered. These include Mango, Cool Mint, Fruit Medley and Creme Brulee. As Anthony Charuvastra, a child psychiatrist and assistant professor at New York University’s Medical Center put it, “Who over 25 is looking for creme brulee as part of a smoking experience?”
Like all modern tech companies that attract tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding, Juul believes it is doing something globally valuable, acting as “part of the solution to end combustible smoking,’’ as its marketing material proclaims. A “Mission & Values” statement on the company’s website declares that no minor should be in possession of Juul and argues that the company is working to combat underage use. In August, it instituted an age-verification system on its e-commerce site to try and prevent anyone under 21 from buying Juul products.
“James and Adam recognized a groundbreaking opportunity to apply industrial design to the smoking industry, which had not materially evolved in over one hundred years,” the Juul website also declares, indicating how little Silicon Valley can distinguish between what needs to be disrupted and what simply needs to go away.
When asked about Juul’s use by teenagers, the company said in a statement, “We condemn the use of our product by minors. We are fully committed to dramatically reducing the incidence of young people using Juul.”
Yeah, the “we here at Juul are very concerned about teen vaping” sounds pretty lame and vapid (They gave a similar statement to Women’s Health), especially when it sounds EXACTLY like the Tobacco Industry excuses for their products being blatantly marketed to teens for decades. So, colour me seriously unimpressed with the owners of Juul and their milquetoast response about teens using their product.
This one is from the University of California, San Francisco (one of the leading anti-tobacco schools in the nation). It found that vapour from e-cigarettes not only contain carcinogenic chemicals, it also found that sweet, fruity-flavoured e-cig flavours are the worst for delivering carcinogenic chemicals into the lung.
These chemicals do not show up in the “ingredients” of e-cigarettes.
The chemicals are not listed on the ingredients of the vape liquid. They’re found under the catch-all description of “flavorings”, the researchers said.
Dr. Mark Rubinstein, of UCSF’s Division of Adolescent Medicine, and colleagues tested 67 teenagers who vape and compared them to 16 teens who both vape and smoke tobacco cigarettes and to 20 teens who do not use either type of cigarette.
They tested their urine and saliva and asked questions about cigarette use.
Those who used both types of cigarette had significantly higher levels of dangerous chemicals, including acrylonitrile, acrolein, propylene oxide, acrylamide and crotonaldehyde, the team reported. And those who used only e-cigarettes had much higher levels than those who used neither product.
“Among our e-cigarette–only participants, the use of fruit-flavored products produced significantly higher levels of the metabolites of acrylonitrile,” they wrote.
Glycerin and other flavorings in both tobacco and e-cigarettes can react with one another or break down into the potentially harmful chemicals.
“Acrylonitrile is a highly poisonous compound used widely in the manufacture of plastics, adhesives and synthetic rubber,” the National Center for Biotechnology Information says on its website.
Acrolein “is toxic to humans following inhalation, oral or dermal exposure,” the Environmental Protection Agency says. Some studies show it can play a part in bringing about lung cancer, although the EPA says there is not enough data to show whether it causes cancer in people.
This is just the latest in countless studies showing that e-cigarettes are — at BEST — not completely benign and really should be avoided by teens … and more should be done to dissuade teens from using them. They might be better than cigarettes, and might be a viable option for a smoker to quit cigarettes, but they should not be used by teens as an alternative delivery system for addictive nicotine. The best choice is to simply avoid nicotine in any form … period.
Another nail in the coffin on the idea that e-cigs are completely safe. Again, I’m a bit ambivalent on e-cigs, but it does bother me — a lot — to see them pretty blatantly marketed to teenagers. Like Medical News Today states … teenagers should not be using e-cigarettes at all.
Teen vaping use had increased dramatically from 2011 to 2015 (from less than 2 percent to 16 percent in just four years). Why? Kids were seeing lots of advertising in teen magazines and on TV making e-cigs look cool and hip … and harmless. In the long run, despite an initial investment, they’re cheaper than cigarettes. And most of all, they used to be really easy to buy — and still are pretty easy to buy online.
From 2015 to 2016, teen vaping actually dropped a bunch, from 16 percent to 11.3 percent. That’s roughly a 30 percent decrease.
Meanwhile, teen smoking dropped to an all-time low of 8 percent (high school students). Man, when I first started this blog over on blogspot 10-12 years ago, the teen smoking rate was still 22.5 percent. It frustrated the crap out of me because year after year, it refused to drop.
Amazingly, 19 years ago, it was over 35 percent! (Thanks, Joe Camel). Now, it’s down to 8. That is roughly a 72 percent decrease in 19 years. And the combined teen smoking/vaping/chewing rate (essentially any tobacco product) is down to 20.2 percent.
Preteen girl tries e-cigarette with her friend
the past couple of years have been frustrating, as well. While it was great to see the the smoking rate among teens dropping dramatically, the teen vaping rate was increasing during that time just as dramatically. What that meant is that roughly the same percentage of kids were still getting addicted to nicotine, but that they had just discovered a new delivery system.
Matt Myers, from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids responds: “This is unimaginable, extraordinary progress. This is a change of a cosmic nature that has the potential to dramatically impact lung cancer, heart disease, asthma and other problems.”
Robin Koval with the Truth Initiative said these latest numbers might be showing that smoking its on its way out for good. Cigarette smoking has really dropped dramatically just in the past five years for a variety of reason — the popularity of vaping, cigarette taxes, the stigma of smoking and smoking bans being the main reasons.
I want to make it clear, I don’t have a problem with adults vaping, especially if it’s helping them quit smoking. I do have a problem with teenagers getting hooked on nicotine to begin with via vaping. And I really have a problem with some of the reckless advertising being done by vaping brands. It’s still nicotine and it’s still one of the most addictive substances on the planet.
Anti-tobacco advocates had a variety of theories behind the dramatic dropoff in teen vaping (one advocate suggested that the experimental allure of e-cigs has worn off). I have a theory that I think more vendors are cracking down on selling vaping products with an ID … and more states are not allowing vaping products to be sold to teens or even to people under 21. This Washington Post article points out that the feds sent out more than 4,000 warning letters to retailers cautioning them against selling e-cigs to minors.
Anyway, it’s looking good for the moment, though the FDA has delayed implementing regulations over e-cigs … and who knows what the Trump administration is going to do on this issue. I have zero trust in them.
Yesterday, I posted about a Washington Post article examining the dropping smoking rate in the U.S. since 1970. As part of that article was information about teen smoking. I thought it was worth exploring in a second post.
Cutting the teen smoking rate is critical to stamping out smoking because virtually no one takes up smoking past the age of 21. Most smokers started when they were 16, 15, 14 years old. If a kid can make it to 19 without taking up smoking, he or she will likely never take up smoking.
It’s been a very frustrating battle to cut back on teen smoking, with both Big Tobacco and Hollywood conspiring to fight anti-tobacco efforts. However, the teen smoking rate has absolutely collapsed in the past couple of years; unfortunately, not necessarily for a good reason.
I made a second graph using my Excel skillz showing the teen smoking rate, then added some explanations for what has been going on for the past 25 years.
The teen smoking rate was incredibly high in the 1990s, peaking in 1997. What is considered the biggest culprit for this? Joe Camel. Joe Camel was introduced by RJ Reynolds in 1987 and was a disgustingly brazen attempt by RJR to lure teens into the smoking world with an aggressive campaign showing Joe Camel as cool, suave, sophisticated, hip, etc. Joe Camel was portrayed as an Air Force pilot, a motorcyclist, a James Bond character, etc.
RJ Reynolds never copped to this of course, but internal documents released by the various court cases confirmed it. According to these documents:
A) In 1974, RJR’s Vice-President of Marketing gave a presentation that “young adult market . . . represent[s] tomorrow’s cigarette business. As this 14-24 age group matures, they will account for a key share of the total cigarette volume – for at least the next 25 years.”
B) A 1974 memo by the R. J. Reynolds Research Department points out that capturing the young adult market is vital because “virtually all [smokers] start by the age of 25” and “most smokers begin smoking regularly and select a usual brand at or before the age of 18.
So they were absolutely going after kids. Joe Camel was incredibly successful. The teen smoking rate in 1991 was 27.5 percent and by 1997, it had grown to 36.4 percent (even as the adult smoking rate was plummeting during this time).
Then came along the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998. The MSA is much-maligned for not doing as much as it could have to stamp out smoking, but it did one extremely important thing — it banned Joe Camel. RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies were no longer allowed to use cartoon characters (Many years ago, Kool used a cartoon penguin to market its brand) in their advertisements. One of the other things the MSA banned was the product placement of tobacco products in Hollywood movies.
No more on-screen smoking for you, Wolverine
This had a remarkable effect on reducing teen smoking, as did the billions of MSA funds spent on tobacco education programs in schools. The teen smoking rate dropped down to 21.9 percent by 2003.
Then a very weird thing took place. The teen smoking rate actually went UP in 2005, to 23.0 percent. What happened? One very big thing. States began to figure out they weren’t actually required to spend MSA funds on tobacco education and cessation programs and they started diverting the MSA payouts to their general funds simply balancing their budgets. Funding for anti-tobacco programs dried up. And the teen smoking rate rose. It was an incredibly frustrating period.
The other bizarre thing that happened is that even though placement of tobacco products was specifically banned in Hollywood movies, the rate of smoking scenes in PG-13, PG and even G movies actually went UP … even though Hollywood supposedly wasn’t collecting a nickel from Big Tobacco. They were literally giving Big Tobacco free advertising because Hollywood was stuck in this insane notion that smoking was cool and hip.
When it became apparent that Hollywood studios were part of the problem, a movement began to require an R rating for smoking scenes. Finally in 2008, the MPAA agreed to consider R ratings for smoking scenes. The policy isn’t perfect, but I think it’s actually worked, because movie studios don’t like R ratings and they just don’t want to bother butting heads with the MPAA over these ratings when they plan well ahead of time for movies to be rated PG-13. So, even well-known smoking Marvel characters such as Wolverine and Nick Fury were forced to stop chomping their cigars.
So, that teen smoking rate started dropping — to 18 percent in 2011 and 15.7 percent in 2013. Partly because of the lack of smoking in movies marketed to teens, I believe and partly because of the great work done by the Truth Campaign, a non-governmental, non-profit organization that’s been around since the late 1990s fighting teen smoking with a series of really good anti-smoking ads on TV and YouTube. Truth was originally funded with MSA funds, but that source has dried up and is now funded by donations and savvy investments.
Kids using e-cigs … it makes me crazy.
The recent rapid drop in teen smoking is great, except for one caveat. The biggest reason for the recent collapse in the teen smoking rate (now, down below 10 percent) is the rapid rise in the popularity of e-cigs. The teen use of e-cigs tripled from 2013 to 2014 and in fact now, many more teens vape (13.4 percent in 2014 and I guarantee that number is higher now) than smoke. This is a mixed bag. On the one hand, teens aren’t smoking. But, on the other hand, they are getting addicted to nicotine. No nicotine addiction at all is the ideal. And studies have shown that a higher percentage of kids who vape eventually take up smoking than those who don’t vape. The Food and Drug Administration plans to ban e-cig sales to minors, but they need to crack down on e-cig marketing to teens (e-cig companies are using the EXACT same marketing techniques as Big Tobacco did 20 years ago to appeal to teens) and online sales of e-cig products.
They study, which included a survey of more than 2,000 teens, states that about 40 percent of the kids using e-cigs have never smoked a cigarette. Moreover, it showed how important peer pressure is for affecting how many kids use e-cigs. More than one-third — 34 percent — of teen e-cig users have other e-cig users at home or among their friends.
From the Good Morning America article:
Adolescents who have three or four of their closest friends who used e-cigarettes were 104 times as likely than those with no friends who currently used e-cigarettes, to be a current e-cigarette user themselves,” says Jessica Barrington-Trimis, research associate at the University of Southern California and the study’s lead author. “So that’s a very strong finding.”
One of the biggest drags about e-cigs (No pun intended) is that it took 20-30 years of work to convince kids that smoking was not “cool” or “hip,” or whatever. And now all that work seems to be becoming undone by kids simply choosing a different nicotine delivery system. Granted, e-cigs may not be quite as bad as cigarettes, but they are still pumping kids full of nicotine, an incredibly addictive and not benign substance.
From the article:
E-cigarettes often contain nicotine, so they may induce sort of a psychological dependency on nicotine and then may lead to future cigarette use,” Barrington-Trimis explained. “Or, e-cigarettes may lead to the normalization of smoking behaviors and that’s the normalization that we’re concerned with.”
“We don’t want to see smoking normalized again,” said Delaware State Representative Debra Heffernan, a prime sponsor of a passed bill that bans smoking e-cigarettes indoors. “You used to never see it and now I’ve seen people smoking them while standing in line at Starbucks or in a store. It’s just scary that it has become so popular so quickly.”
