E-Cigarette Use Highest Among Young Adults: Report
Almost 4 percent of all adult Americans use them, new survey shows
Schoenborn and her colleague Renee Gindi outline their findings in the CDC's October NCHS report released Oct. 28.
Erika Sward, assistant vice president for national advocacy with the American Lung Association, suggested that the CDC data will end up becoming a "very useful and much needed benchmark" for monitoring e-cigarettes.
"Electronic cigarettes are really the wild, wild West," Sward said. "There's absolutely no federal oversight of e-cigarettes, even though the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] has not found any e-cig to be safe or effective in helping smokers quit. And to our knowledge, no e-cigarette company has even applied to the FDA for approval as a smoking cessation product."
But many manufacturers market the devices that way anyway, she said.
"So the real take-away message is that the people who are most likely to use e-cigs are our most vulnerable adults: the young, current smokers, and those who have recently quit or are trying to quit," she said.
Sward added, "So just as we're seeing traditional cigarette use decline -- after years of FDA regulation and state smoke-free policies and taxation -- we're now seeing the tobacco industry continue its narrative of aggressively marketing e-cigarettes to younger people in the hopes of developing a whole new lifelong user.
"And until we act," she said, "troubling studies like this one suggest that we're on a path to a real public health crisis that will undo much of the progress that has been made to reduce tobacco use in the U.S."
The report comes on the heels of a recommendation by the nation's leading pediatricians group to raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products and e-cigarettes to 21 across the United States.
The new policy recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics, released Oct. 26, also called for the FDA to regulate e-cigarettes the same way it regulates other tobacco products.
E-Cigarette Use Highest Among Young Adults: Report
Almost 4 percent of all adult Americans use them, new survey shows
Schoenborn and her colleague Renee Gindi outline their findings in the CDC's October NCHS report released Oct. 28.
Erika Sward, assistant vice president for national advocacy with the American Lung Association, suggested that the CDC data will end up becoming a "very useful and much needed benchmark" for monitoring e-cigarettes.
"Electronic cigarettes are really the wild, wild West," Sward said. "There's absolutely no federal oversight of e-cigarettes, even though the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] has not found any e-cig to be safe or effective in helping smokers quit. And to our knowledge, no e-cigarette company has even applied to the FDA for approval as a smoking cessation product."
But many manufacturers market the devices that way anyway, she said.
"So the real take-away message is that the people who are most likely to use e-cigs are our most vulnerable adults: the young, current smokers, and those who have recently quit or are trying to quit," she said.
Sward added, "So just as we're seeing traditional cigarette use decline -- after years of FDA regulation and state smoke-free policies and taxation -- we're now seeing the tobacco industry continue its narrative of aggressively marketing e-cigarettes to younger people in the hopes of developing a whole new lifelong user.
"And until we act," she said, "troubling studies like this one suggest that we're on a path to a real public health crisis that will undo much of the progress that has been made to reduce tobacco use in the U.S."
The report comes on the heels of a recommendation by the nation's leading pediatricians group to raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products and e-cigarettes to 21 across the United States.
The new policy recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics, released Oct. 26, also called for the FDA to regulate e-cigarettes the same way it regulates other tobacco products.