E-cigarettes, marketed as an aide for stopping smoking, may instead nudge teens towards tobacco, claimed a latest study.

‘E-cigarettes may nudge teenagers towards tobacco. Adolescents who used an e-cigarette were observed to be more likely to take up smoking a year later than those who never did.’

A year later, about half the group was questioned again. 




Compared to those who never 'vaped', those who tried it at least once in 2013 were almost three times more likely to have tried smoking a year later.
"Adolescents who use e-cigarettes are more likely to start smoking cigarettes. This result together with other findings suggests that policies restructuring adolescents' access to e-cigarettes may have a rationale from a public health standpoint," concluded the authors of the study published in Tobacco Control.
But experts not involved in the study said the evidence was flimsy, and did not prove that e-cigarettes cause smoking.
"Does one lead to the other? Or does using e-cigs define a certain population of teens, i.e. the ones most likely to start smoking anyway?" said a commentary compiled by the Science Media Center.
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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that from 2011 to 2014, e-cigarette use among high school students grew from 1.5-13.4%.
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Earlier this month, another US-based study said that e-cigarettes lowered the odds of successfully quitting - but that research too was criticized as flawed.
Source-AFP