Study: 490,000 U.S. Young People Switched to Cigarettes Because of Vaping

Reported on October 24, over the past six months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked vaping to 1,479 cases of a mysterious lung illness. Since the outbreak began, at least 33 people have died. The illness is characterized by chest pain, shortness of breath, and vomiting, and it has largely affected young people. The overwhelming majority of cases (nearly 80%) involved e-cigarette users under the age of 35, while another 15% were younger than 18.

The outbreak has caused anxiety among parents and prompted calls for government action. President Trump said he planned to ban e-cigarette flavors that appear to be specifically designed to attract and hook young people. California Governor Gavin Newsom urged everyone to immediately “stop vaping,” and Los Angeles County’s ban on flavored tobacco products was set to take effect on October 31.

So far, the vast majority of the lung injury cases identified appear to be related to vapor cartridges containing THC, the component in cannabis responsible for its characteristic high. Dozens of disease investigators are looking into the case.

These recent deaths are tragic, but research suggests the long-term harm from vaping, whether with or without THC, may be even more serious.

In the current outbreak, only a small fraction of all vapers have been affected (1,479 illnesses so far, compared with 17.3 million e-cigarette users in the United States).

E-cigarette manufacturers have marketed their products as a better option for adult smokers who are already addicted to nicotine. But for thousands of young people who had never smoked before, vaping has had the opposite effect: it creates nicotine addiction and eventually leads to cigarette smoking.

Some young people may experiment and later turn to smoking and would have become smokers anyway. But according to estimates by Samir Soneji, a tobacco control researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, by 2018 about 495,000 people aged 12 to 29 who had tried e-cigarettes would go on to become regular smokers directly because of their vaping habit. In other words, these 495,000 people would never have become smokers if they had not vaped first. Every year brings a new crop of these future smokers—and the younger the vapers are, the more future smokers there will be.

The long-term consequences of smoking are well known. In the United States, 1,300 people die every day from smoking or direct exposure to cigarettes.

In 2013, researchers at Harvard Medical School, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and other institutions estimated deaths from various smoking-related causes. When those rates are applied to the new smokers created through vaping, the human toll is catastrophic.

Long-term smoking deaths will far exceed the current vaping deaths.

As of 2018, among the 494,667 smokers who began smoking after trying e-cigarettes, an estimated 168,537 will die prematurely from smoking-related diseases.