Pitt study finds that e-cigarette use can lead to smoking in young people

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

E-cigarettes are billed as a means to deliver nicotine without the lung damage of traditional cigarettes. But do the sweet, candy-flavored e-cigarettes also encourage young adults to take up cigarette smoking?

That’s the issue tackled by University of Pittsburgh researcher Brian Primack in a research paper published online Sunday in the American Journal of Medicine. The study surveyed a group of 18- to 30-year-old nonsmokers in March 2013 and then again 18 months later.

Weighting its survey data to match up demographically with the U.S. population, the study found that 47.7 percent of those who had used e-cigarettes went on to try smoking, versus 10.2 percent of those who had not tried e-cigarettes.

Dr. Primack, director of Pitt’s Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health, and dean of Pitt’s Honors College, authored the study with a group of researchers from Pitt, Dartmouth and the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System.

“There have been a lot of studies and, in short, they make us concerned that people who experiment with e-cigarettes. . . [are] at a higher risk of later on transitioning,” said Dr. Primack.

This — and previous similar studies by Dr. Primack — were criticized Monday as “nothing more than witch hunts to demonize vaping,” by Bill Godshall, executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania.

“In order for e-cigs to be a “gateway” to cigarette smoking, a person’s regular use of e-cigarettes must cause [not merely precede] a person’s regular cigarette smoking,” said Mr. Godshall in an email, noting that U.S. smoking rates have hit record lows every year since 2010.

Dr. Primack said the study attempted to isolate causation of the e-cigarettes by addressing other possible variables, such as sensation-seeking behavior and rebelliousness. While rebellion did have a significant correlation, it was not as significant as the correlation between trying e-cigarettes and later smoking.

There were 915 participants who took both surveys, 18 months apart, and of those 16 had tried ecigarettes initially. Six of those