Risk even higher among adults who used e-cigarettes and smoked tobacco
Using e-cigarettes significantly increases the risk of developing chronic lung conditions such as asthma and emphysema, U.S. researchers say.
The study, published Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is among the first to show the potential long-term harms of using e-cigarettes, which are often promoted as a safer alternative to tobacco and a means of helping smokers quit.
It found e-cigarettes increased the risk of lung disease by one-third compared with people who never smoked or vaped. And the risk was even higher among adults who used e-cigarettes and smoked tobacco.
The research comes as the United States faces a youth vaping crisis. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 27.5 per cent of high school students in the United States use e-cigarettes, up from 20.7 per cent in 2018.
“E-cigarettes are promoted as harmless, and they’re not,” Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said in a phone interview.
Thomson Reuters – December 17, 2019.
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