The White House recently announced plans to ban flavoured e-cigarettes \u2013 except for tobacco-flavoured products \u2013 because of a rise in the number of middle and high school students using these products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few days later, India\u2019s cabinet approved an emergency order<\/a> banning the production, import and sale of e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To date, over 20 countries<\/a>, mostly in South America, the Middle East and South-East Asia, have banned the sale of e-cigarette products. Some countries have also banned possession of these products. Thailand has the strictest laws, while countries such as Australia, Canada and Norway have introduced many restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research suggests that e-cigarettes may help smokers quit regular cigarettes<\/a> benefiting their long-term health. But young people who have never smoked traditional cigarettes are taking up e-cigarettes<\/a>, which are available in over 1,500 flavours, including bubble gum and candy floss. In a survey of US youths aged 12-17<\/a>, 81% of e-cigarette users reported that the first product they ever used was flavoured and that they use e-cigarettes because \u201cthey come in flavors I like\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over 3.6m children in the US use e-cigarettes<\/a>, with a jump of 78% (from 11.7% to 20.8%) of US high school students reporting e-cigarette use from 2017 to 2018. And in the UK<\/a>, 1.6% of those aged 11-18 use e-cigarettes more than once a week, compared with 0.5% in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of the highly addictive nature of nicotine, there is a risk that young e-cigarette users might switch to using traditional cigarettes. Indeed, some healthcare professionals refer to e-cigarettes as a \u201cgateway drug\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To continue reading, please click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Article originally appeared in The Conversation.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image<\/a>, by www.vaping360.com<\/a>,<\/em> has been used courtesy of a <\/em>Creative Commons license. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To date, over 20 countries have banned the sale of e-cigarette products. Professor Lorraine Martin and Dr James Reihill explore the potential harm of e-cigarettes and argue that vaping is not a safe alternative to smoking tobacco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2566,"featured_media":5950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-wellbeing"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":9774,"key":"field_66d0cbf58f930","label":"Authors","name":"authors","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"relationship","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"post_type":["authors"],"post_status":["publish"],"taxonomy":"","filters":["search"],"return_format":"id","min":0,"max":10,"allow_in_bindings":0,"elements":["featured_image"],"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"authors","_valid":1}},"description":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":9776,"key":"field_66d2183027749","label":"Description","name":"description","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","allow_in_bindings":0,"tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":1,"_name":"description","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/76\/2019\/09\/16086392488_8f0d82d032_z.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_featured_media_url","jetpack_sharing_enabled","amp_enabled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}