E-cigarette use on the rise among US youth

Proponents of electronic cigarette regulation are renewing calls for the Obama administration to take action, following the release of new data pointing to increased use of the products among U.S. youth.
 
Although the number of teens smoking cigarettes has declined in recent years, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study issued this week found a rise in the use of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products like pipes, snus, hand-rolled cigarettes and tobacco strips and sticks that dissolve in the user’s mouth.
 
The CDC found that of the 23 percent of high school students who were using tobacco products last year, 4.5 percent had smoked an e-cigarette in the last 30 days, up from 2.8 percent in 2012.
 
{mosads}“Keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of kids must be a top priority,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said in a statement Thursday.
 
“Marketing these tobacco products to young people must be stopped in order to prevent creating a new generation of nicotine addicts,” he added. “The Food and Drug Administration must act to regulate e-cigarettes and ensure an end to the nefarious practices of companies that market these products to youth.”
 
Harkin chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has launched an investigation of the burgeoning e-cigarette industry.
 
Though the jury’s still out on how e-cigarettes affect public health, a 2014 surgeon general report said nicotine in any form — combustible, smokeless or electronic —can have adverse effects on adolescent brain development.