More American teenagers are choosing e-cigarettes as their introduction to smoking than traditional tobacco products, a study has shown.
The trend has worried experts who warn that nicotine may have harmful effects on the brains of adolescents. They also fear that e-cigarettes might act as a "gateway" to tobacco.
Scientists made the discovery after analysing data on the smoking habits of 40,000 to 50,000 students in around 400 secondary schools in the US.
They found that among 14 to16-year-olds, 9% reported using an e-cigarette in the past 30 days while only 4% had smoked a tobacco cigarette.
In the older 17-18 age group 16% reported using an e-cigarette and 14% a cigarette containing tobacco.
Dr Wilson Compton, deputy director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, which funded the research, said: " I was really surprised that among the eighth graders over a third of users of e-cigarettes hadn't previously tried tobacco cigarettes
"In a lot of kids, their first exposure to nicotine is now with these e-products."
E-cigarettes, widely used as an aid to quitting smoking, contain a heating element that produces a vapour containing nicotine but are free of many of the harmful substances associated with tobacco.
Source: Irish Independent, 16/02/15
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