Teens who vape are three times more likely to smoke cigarettes later in life than those who don't use any tobacco products, a major study published today by the American Journal of Medicine has found.
While e-cigarettes are increasingly marketed as a tool to help adults quit smoking, with flavours like vanilla custard and Smurf's blood, critics argue the marketing of e-cigarettes are also targeting adolescents.
Tobacco control researcher Marewa Glover said, "There's just been a large, randomised, controlled trial come out in the UK last week that showed that people who were using electronic cigarettes for quitting compared to those using patches and gum - the e-cigarettes were twice as effective".
Middlemore Hospital respiratory specialist Dr Stuart Jones added, "[They are] very attractive-sounding flavours and they smell much, much better than what traditional cigarettes used to".
"I think we need to sit up and listen. I think we need to take note and say that this gateway to cigarette smoking in adolescence appears to be a real phenomenon," he said.
Others, however, say the report is misrepresentative
"You can't say that teenagers experimenting over here with different things caused them to experiment with these other things over here," Ms Glover said.
In the US, the number of school students using e-cigarettes doubled last year to hit 3.6 million, causing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to announce plans to limit the sale of sweet flavoured e-cigarettes in places where people under 18 shop.
Vapo, one of New Zealand's biggest e-cigarette retailers, told 1 NEWS it has a strict policy to not serve customers under 18, but also not to sell to someone who isn't an existing smoker.
However, those policies are difficult to police, and with e-cigarettes still being so new, research about the effects of vaping is sparse and often contradictory, making regulation hard.
"We need to be very clear in what we want as a country in terms of the availability of e-cigarettes," Mr Jones said.
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