Capitol Report
By State Representative, Leon D. Young
Leon D. Young
Per a recently release report published from the United States Surgeon General, the soaring use of e-cigarettes among young people “is now a major public health concern.”
Moreover, it is the first comprehensive look on the subject from the nation’s highest public health authority, and finds that e-cigarettes are now the commonly used tobacco product among youths, surpassing tobacco cigarettes.
The report, citing studies in animals, claims that e-cigarettes, which turn nicotine into inhalable vapor, can harm developing brains of teenagers who use them, and can create harmful aerosol for people around the user.
Some researchers have said that e-cigarettes use among youth could act as a gateway to traditional smoking, but the report says the relationship is not yet fully established. It should be noted that cigarette smoking among youth has fallen sharply in recent years, but the use of nicotine products over all remains essentially flat among young people.
And, in the preface to the report, the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, wrote that e-cigarettes use among high school students increased “an astounding 900 percent” from 2011 to 2015.
Citing research from the Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C.) and Prevention, the report found that 16 percent of high schoolers used e-cigarettes in 2015, up from 13.4 percent a year earlier.
In 2015, nearly 38 percent of high schoolers reported having tried an e-cigarette at least once. The alarms raised about nicotine among youth come as the landscape is shifting around tobacco use.
The C.D.C. finds that the use of traditional cigarettes has dropped below 40 million Americans for the first time in 50 years.
And, at least among adults, e-cigarettes are considered a far less harmful alternative because, unlike traditional cigarettes, they do not reply on combustion, which leads to inhalation of deadly carcinogenic particles, and 480,000 deaths each year.
Lastly, but not surprisingly, the surgeon general’s report finds that the $3.5 billion e-cigarette industry has mimicked marketing techniques of the tobacco industry that have “found to be appealing to youth and young adults.”
Of concern to public health advocates has been the explosive growth and marketing of flavored e-cigarettes; a study published last month in the Journal of Pediatrics found that young people who smoked flavored e-cigarettes were more at risk of taking up traditional smoking.
In the final analysis, the use of tobacco products is a pernicious, and potentially fatal, habit.
The very fact that the tobacco industry has found a new way to entice youth into consuming these lethal products should be a concern to all of us.
Make no mistake: Smoking, and using tobacco products, is tantamount to playing Russian roulette.