UNITED STATES: Medical discussions have evolved around the use of vaping among adolescents and young adults. A steady augmentation in e-cigarette usage among young adults has been on the forefront for the last decade, which also highlights how adolescents are targeted by e-cigarette companies.
An electric pulse is used to operate e-cigarettes (used for vaping) that run on batteries. An electric pulse is used to heat and aerosolize a liquid that basically contains nicotine. They were introduced in the US first in 2007 and were marketed by nicotine companies as an alternative to smoking.
Impact of vaping
Teenagers and adolescents are at increased risk of getting addicted to combustible cigarettes and marijuana. Over the last couple of decades, there has been a decrease in the number of young adults depending on combustible cigarettes.
A demonstration shown by the Youth Risk Behaviour Survey stated the decrease in the number of teens using combustible cigarettes from 70% in 1991 to 58.4% in 2003 and then further down to 28.9% in 2017.
As per reports, Cigarette smoking is one of the primary causes of avoidable morbidity and mortality and has a wide variety of well-known negative effects. E-cigarettes, more widely known as vaping, are one such lifestyle choice, comparable to smoking, that can negatively impact fertility in both men and women. According to statistics, 6.5% of men and 5% of women currently use e-cigarettes.
Physicians have worked tremendously well in order to give some insight about the dangers of smoking and have introduced more regulations to control the use of e-cigarettes.
In 2016, Congress passed the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act, which gave the FDA the power to take care of the e-cigarette packaging. An administrative stay on July 5, 2022, stated that the FDA “determined that there were scientific issues unique to the JUUL application that warrant additional review.”
Adolescents have been mercilessly targeted by the e-cigarette companies. The ads as well as the packaging strategies were all meant to steal the attention of the adolescents. Advertisements were dedicated to these teens to such an extent that, from 2014–2016, 78% of middle and high school teens were subjected to at least one advertisement.
Almost 3000 incidents of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use related lung injury , as well as 68 fatalities, were documented in the USA by February 18, 2020, among e-cigarette users. Several cases were believed to be linked to vitamin E acetate and items containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) statistics claimed youths’ e-cigarette use is already at alarmingly high levels: in 2021, 28% (or one in 35) middle school pupils and 11.3% (or one in nine) high school students reported using e-cigarettes.
Some reports and study also adds that vaping are responsible to raise heart rate and blood pressure. It also results in chest pain and breathlessness. Another study has discovered that the effects range from physical fighting to attempted suicide.
Teens have been more attracted to the nicotine addiction that originates in them at that age, with studies showing that approximately 90% of adults smoke daily prior to turning the age of 18.
One of the most important reasons why teens prefer e-cigarettes is the flavor, and the devices used to aerosolize the pods are designed to look like objects ranging from USBs to pens to inhalers.
E-cigarettes were introduced as an alternative of combustible cigarettes but its health effects seems to be increasing at an alarming rate. As per medical statistics from the above reports, teenagers are mostly affected due to high usage of vaping in them.
It is also found that many teenagers defends vaping for it being an alternative to combustible cigarettes. Some also indulge in the usage of e-cigarette as they believe it is not harmful but the recent reports have cleared how much ill effects these electronic nicotine objects holds.
Therefore to stop a future surge of vaping-related sickness, the FDA and other health organisations as weel as government organisations urgently need to take more decisive action.
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