Safety or danger of e-cigs as cloudy as their vapor
By Lois M. Collins, Deseret News
The small clouds are more noticeable than the people enveloped in the white smoke, visible on city streets and college campuses across America. They are caused by “vaping,” the use of liquid nicotine from one of various types of so-called electronic cigarettes.
The users — or “vapers” — include the roughly 13 percent of high school students who admitted using e-cigarettes last year, a threefold increase to close to 2 million adolescents, according to the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that’s the first survey to show more e-cigarette use than any tobacco product in that age group.
That trend has caught the attention of pediatricians and apparently the general public. The American Academy of Pediatrics this week called for a minimum age of 21 to buy products containing nicotine, including e-cigarettes. A recently released NPR-Truven Health Analytics Health Poll found 57 percent of American adults think e-cigarettes should be regulated like cigarettes by the Food and Drug Administration.
Health experts say parents should discourage use of vaping products because the safety or danger of e-cigarettes is as cloudy as the vapor they produce.