Kids on e-cigs may go to pot

NEW YORK: Nearly one in five high school students who said they used electronic cigarettes to vaporise nicotine also used them to vaporise pot, according to a survey of nearly 4 000 Connecticut teens.

The study is the first evidence that teens are using electronic cigarettes to vaporise cannabis, the researchers said. The paper, by Meghan Morean of Oberlin College in Ohio and colleagues, raises concerns that the rising popularity of e-cigarettes may encourage teens to use the devices to vaporise cannabis, potentially exposing them to higher concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

“Forms of cannabis that can be vaporised, like hash oil, can be many times stronger than marijuana that is smoked,” Morean said.

A study released last month suggested US teens who try electronic cigarettes may be more than twice as likely to move on to smoking conventional cigarettes than those who have never tried the devices.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said about 2 million students had tried e-cigarettes last year, triple the number in 2013.

Morean and colleagues found that of students who had used e-cigarettes, 18 percent had used them to vaporise cannabis. High school students in the study were 27 times more likely to use e-cigarettes to vaporise cannabis than adults who use e-cigarettes, the researchers said. – Reuters