A survey on e-cigarette among high school students in England has revealed that one in five students has used it, according to a published on Tuesday in the journal BMC Public Health.
The report said large number of 14 to 17-year-olds interviewed revealed use of e-cigarette marked their introduction to tobacco.
Over 16,000 students took part in the study carried out across a large area of England by researchers from Liverpool John Moores University.
The researchers in their findings called for controls on the promotion and sale of e-cigarettes to children.
The report says e-cigarettes are marketed as an alternative nicotine delivery system that is healthier than tobacco but has sparked a global debate around their safety and efficacy.
The researchers said a key concern with e-cigarettes is the potential to recruit children to nicotine dependence.
It said almost one in 20 teenagers who had never smoked conventional cigarettes accessed e-cigarettes.
“Specifically, for teenagers there is glamourisation of e-cigarettes in advertising, celebrity endorsement. The range of attractive designs and flavourings available are likely to be furthering their appeal,” the researchers said in the paper.
They expressed concern at the number of non-smoking teens who decided to experiment with “what might be packaged to look like a safe attractive product but actually contains a highly addictive drug”.
One of the authors of the study, Prof. Mark Bellis, said the research suggested people should be very concerned about teenagers accessing e-cigarettes.
Bellis said: “While debate on e-cigarettes has focused largely on whether or not they act as a gateway to tobacco cigarette use e-cigarettes themselves contain a highly addictive drug.
“It has more serious and longer lasting impacts on children because their brains are still developing.”
According to Bellis, in spite of being practically unheard of just a decade ago, e-cigarettes are now widely available, heavily promoted yet weakly regulated.
“Such rapid penetration into teenage culture of what is essentially a new drug use option is without precedent,” he said.
The team said the high prevalence of access to e-cigarette among teenagers and its use highlighted an urgent need for age restrictions on the promotion and sale of the product.
The researchers said: “Our findings highlight the urgent need for controls on e-cigarette sales to children.
“The longer such controls are delayed, the greater the number of children likely to want to access e-cigarettes illicitly.
“But once a ban on sales to children is imposed, high prevalence of e-cigarette access among teenagers will be restricted.”
Xinhua/NAN.