BOH: Canton teens prefer e-cigarettes to real thing

Very few Canton teens identify themselves as current smokers, but an alarming number are puffing on electronic cigarettes, according to a draft report on youth smoking issued by the Canton Board of Health last month.

The report, based on a survey of more than 1,500 Galvin Middle School and Canton High School students administered in December 2013, found that only 1 percent of GMS students and 7 percent of CHS students had smoked at least one conventional cigarette in the last 30 days — well below the national rates for both age groups as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Youth Tobacco Survey.

The Canton survey, which was modeled after the CDC survey and designed to track youth tobacco use in the wake of stricter tobacco control regulations that took effect in January, also found similarly encouraging news for cigar use among GMS students (0 percent) and CHS students (8 percent) and for smokeless/chewing tobacco use among middle schoolers (1 percent). Smokeless/chewing tobacco use was more prevalent at Canton High, however, with 11 percent of students reporting use of the products compared to 6.4 percent of high school students nationally.

But the biggest surprise to local health officials involved the use of e-cigarettes, which have surged in popularity amid ongoing questions about the safety and efficacy of the largely unregulated products.

The report found that 3 percent of GMS students and 13 percent of CHS students had used an e-cigarette, or “vaped,” in the 30 days prior to taking the survey, which is considerably higher than the national rates of 1.1 percent and 2.8 percent found in the CDC survey in 2012.

And while touted as a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes, e-cigarette use among Canton teens was mostly a recreational activity, with 53 percent of GMS students and 57 percent of CHS students indicating that they “vaped” for pleasure.

By contrast, only 12 percent and 11 percent of students at the two schools, respectively, said that they used e-cigarettes in order to reduce their use of other nicotine products, which is the primary benefit promoted by the e-cigarette market’s growing legion of supporters.

“When it came to e-cigarettes, we didn’t really know what to expect,” acknowledged Public Health Director John Ciccotelli, one of the authors of the youth smoking report along with BOH member Dr. Julie Goodman.

Ciccotelli said the questions about e-cigarette usage were late, albeit welcome additions to the Canton survey, especially in light of new research on the topic.

As noted in the BOH report, “There is currently a large controversy regarding e-cigarettes. While some evidence suggests e-cigarettes can help people decrease cigarette consumption, some argue that they may be a gateway to nicotine addiction for non-smokers. For example, based on the NYTS, researchers at the University of California San Francisco reported that adolescents who used e-cigarettes were more likely to start smoking or continue smoking.”

Just this week, in fact, the Washington Post reported on the “staggering proliferation” of e-cigarette brands and flavors as detailed in a series of studies published in the journal Tobacco Control. Researchers, according to the report, found thousands of flavors available on the internet, ranging from “peppermint to pina colada,” with hundreds more arriving on the market each month.

Another recent study, conducted by Research Triangle Institute International, found that e-cigarette TV advertisements that reached children increased by 256 percent between 2011 and 2013, and a new report published by the CDC points to a “dramatic” rise in the number of e-cigarette-related calls to U.S. poison centers, many involving young children who were exposed to liquid nicotine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration only recently announced plans to regulate e-cigarettes; however, there is currently no federal age restriction on the sale of such products. Massachusetts also does not have an e-cigarette law, but some municipalities, including Canton, have enacted their own restrictions.

In January, the Board of Health passed some of the strictest tobacco regulations in the country, raising the minimum purchase age to 21 while banning a slew of “nonmedical” nicotine products such as blunt wraps, snus, and other forms of smokeless tobacco.

Health officials had initially included e-cigarettes in the list of products to be banned, but they softened their stance after hearing from hundreds of passionate supporters, including many adult consumers who had successfully used the devices to quit smoking.

But Ciccotelli said the new research coming out on e-cigarettes, combined with the results of the youth smoking survey, could one day force the board to reconsider its position.

“There are a lot of other factors to consider, and there’s a major push to get kids to start smoking e-cigarettes,” he said. “That’s going to have an influence on where we end up in the future.”

As for the relatively low smoking rates found in the survey, Ciccotelli said health officials were pleased but not all that surprised. “We had a pretty good idea of what the [cigarette] smoking rates were in Canton to begin with,” he said. “We knew they were pretty good compared to the rest of the state.”

Ciccotelli said the board will continue to monitor teen smoking rates over the next five years, using the 2013 data as a baseline. He acknowledged that the current tobacco regulations have a built-in sunset provision whereby the purchase age would revert back to 18 if the measure fails to produce a positive effect on smoking rates; however, Ciccotelli said that “anything is on the table” when it comes to improving public health.

Overall, Canton health officials are encouraged but not yet satisfied with the amount of tobacco use among local teens.

As they indicated in the conclusion of their first youth smoking report, “While it is encouraging that teen smoking and nicotine use in Canton is lower than national rates, we want to make it disappear. To the extent that e-cigarettes may result in nicotine addiction, we also want to prevent this from happening. It is our hope that the new smoking regulation will help Canton reach this goal.”

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Posted by Jay Turner on Jun 19 2014. Filed under News, Schools, Town Government. Both comments and pings are currently closed.