Scientists have called for urgent controls on the promotion and sale of e-cigarettes to children after finding high rates of usage among secondary school pupils in the region.



In a survey of more than 16,000 teenagers in north-west England, the researchers found that one in five students aged 14 to 17 had bought or tried e-cigarettes. Many of those who dabbled with vaping were already regular smokers.

Nearly one in 20 of the teenagers who bought or tried e-cigarettes had never smoked conventional cigarettes before, suggesting that vaping may have become a new activity to experiment with.

But the survey did not reveal who went on to become long term users of e-cigarettes, or whether students used the devices to help them give up traditional tobacco smoking.

E-cigarettes are potentially far less harmful than conventional tobacco products because they deliver a hit of nicotine without the array of cancer-causing chemicals found in cigarette smoke.

But while the devices might help smokers quit their habit, some researchers are concerned that people will become addicted to the nicotine in e-cigarettes instead. The long term health consequences are vaping are not yet well known.

The Liverpool survey, published in the journal BMC Public Health, found a strong link between e-cigarettes and alcohol use. Underaged drinkers were more likely to have obtained e-cigarettes than non-drinkers, while among the non-smokers, binge drinkers were four times more likely to have bought or tried e-cigarettes.



Mark Bellis, a co-author on the study and director of policy, research and development for Public Health Wales, said that among the students surveyed, e-cigarettes seemed to represent another drug to experiment with, rather than a device to help them quit smoking conventional cigarettes.

“We are seeing an awful lot of people who are both smokers and e-cigarette users rather than ex-smokers. They are more used by people who are experimenting with other drugs, including binge drinking alcohol,” he said.



Labels on e-cigarettes already state that they are not for sale to under-18s, and the government is due to bring in a formal ban later this year. “The important thing now is that enforcement is done properly and that advertising and promotion is not done in a way that attracts young people to try them,” said Bellis. “Such rapid penetration into teenage culture of what is essentially a new drug use option is without precedent,” he added.



Wilson Compton, deputy director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse said: “The concern is that exposure to nicotine in adolescence may lead to lifelong risks for addiction. Keeping the rates low in the youth should be a priority for all of us.”



But Marcus Munafo, professor of biological psychiatry at Bristol University, criticised the researchers for their portrayal of e-cigarettes. “To describe electronic cigarette use as ‘a new drug use option’ and part of ‘at-risk teenagers’ substance using repertoires’ is unnecessarily alarmist, given the evidence that regular use among never smokers is negligible, the lack of evidence that electronic cigarette use acts as a gateway to tobacco use, and the likely low level of harm associated with electronic cigarette use.”

About 80,000 people a year die from tobacco smoke-related diseases in Britain, nearly a fifth of all deaths in the over-35s. The most damaging health effects, cancer and heart disease, come from inhaling tar and other chemicals found in tobacco smoke.

Even though a small percentage of non-smokers admitted to having bought or tried e-cigarettes, they outnumbered the ex-smokers.

“The findings are very important,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine “They show a very rapid increase in uptake of electronic cigarettes among young people, with one in five having used them. They also show that there are more young people who are using them but who have never previously smoked, who, it is feared, may subsequently graduate to smoking, than there are ex-smokers using them.”

The campaign group, Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), estimates that 2 million people in Britain use electronic cigarettes, with about 700,000 using them instead of traditional cigarettes and the remainder using both.