Vaping Is Pushing Adults Into Other Drugs, New Study Shows

Vaping electronic cigarettes could be pushing adults into other drugs, a new study from the University of Michigan shows.
The study, which focused on both teenagers 12 to 17 and young adults 18 to 25 over a period of eight years, found vaping for the young adult group was linked to smoking cigarettes and using marijuana and other drugs over time.
This study, which appeared in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, indicates the opposite of earlier ideas that vaping would be primarily used as a smoking cessation activity, or as a way to quit traditional tobacco cigarettes, which are often deemed more harmful.
Instead, for both teens and young adults, using electronic cigarettes is linked to drug use later on.
“We found that this risk was persistent over time and was a risk for both adolescents and young adults,” study author Rebecca Evans-Polce, a research assistant professor at the U-M School of Nursing, said in a statement. “The risk for starting to use cannabis was the same regardless of whether someone was using e-cigarettes or was using other tobacco products.”
For the 18 to 25 group, those who vaped and used other tobacco were 22 times more likely to start smoking, nine times more likely to start using marijuana and three times more likely to start using other drugs.
Those who just vaped, meanwhile, were 11 times more likely to start smoking, six times more likely to start using marijuana and twice as likely to start using other drugs.
This mirrored the findings for the 12 to 17 group as well, who were 54 times more likely to start smoking, eight times more likely to start using marijuana and three times more likely to start using other drugs if they vaped and used other tobacco.
“The really high odds of cigarette initiation regardless of what type of nicotine or tobacco products you’re using is important,” Evans-Polce said. “I think it really highlights that to the extent that you can prevent initiation of vaping and other tobacco products, too, you’ll also go really far in preventing cigarette initiation over the long term.”
Across the country, 39 percent of teens have vaped by the time they reach their senior year of high school, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And in the past month, 14 percent of young adults reported vaping.
Jake Williams, the CEO of nonprofit Healthier Colorado, said nicotine vaping only became popular roughly a decade ago.
“Older Americans got hooked on nicotine via cigarettes, which helps explain why they continue to use them,” Williams told Newsweek. “When you combine that with the fact that our population distribution skews older, it makes sense that cigarette use still exceeds vaping.”
However, for the teens and young adults who are introduced to vaping first, it could indicate a pathway into more traditional smoking and other drugs, as the report revealed.
One of the most common vaping devices, the Juul, delivers nicotine concentrations that pose a higher risk of nicotine addiction, according to a different study published in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.
Vaping is also linked to respiratory injury, illness and sometimes death.
“E-cigarettes pose both unique and overlapping risks with cigarettes, but the polling shows that people, especially younger people, still believe that e-cigarettes are somehow healthier,” Williams said. “There’s still more work to do to get the facts out about these products so we can spare young people from addiction and the health harms that come with it.”