The CDC announced e-cigarettes are having an alarming effect on youths. Findings from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey show e-cigarette use among teenagers has tripled in a single year. Also, for the first time, e-cigarette use has surpassed current use of every other tobacco product, including cigarettes.
Experts from National Jewish Health, the leading respiratory hospital in the nation, were among the first to issue warnings about the dangers of e-cigarettes to teens.
Amy Lukowski, PsyD, Clinical Director of Health Initiatives at National Jewish Health offers this perspective on the survey findings:
- This survey shows, as feared, that e-cigarettes are providing another avenue of putting nicotine into the hands of kids and creating a new generation of users
- This finding reinforces the need for strict legislation on how e-cigarettes are marketed. We need to ensure that e-cigarette, tobacco and hookah companies are not able to target teens with marketing materials.
- It doesn’t take long from using these products and ingesting the nicotine to become addicted. In addition to being addictive, nicotine can harm brain development which directly impacts teens. We must to do something to keep these out of the hands of children, and time is of the essence.
- National Jewish Health supports the FDA in their work to bring additional tobacco products such as e-cigarettes, hookahs and some or all cigars under the same authority as conventional tobacco products.
