Abstract
e.cigarettes become popular in France. This new product attract non-only heavy tobacco smokers, but also teenagers due to a price decrease from more than 100 € to less than 6 € for the disposable e.cigarettes. We explore how much this product could become an instrument of cigarette initiation in teenager’s users or not of tobacco.
Method: A question regarding e.cigarettes has been introduced in the annual survey by auto questionnaire conducted since 1991 by PST with school authorities on a 2% random sample among 11-19-year-old teenagers.
Results: Among 3409 teenagersfrom 12 to 19 years, questioned in 2012, 49% were girls, mean age is 15.34 years. The rate of daily smokers and occasional smokers is 4.2% and 16.8% among the 12-15-year-old and 21.3% and 10.4% among the 16-19-year-old teenagers.
The percentage of teenagers reporting experimentation of e.cigarettes is 6% from 12-14-year-old, 12% among 15-16-year-old, 19% among 17 years old, drops down to 12% for the 18-year-old and to 6% for the 19-year-old.
Until the age of 17, girls had more experienced e.cigarette than the boys.
The experimentation varies according to smoking status: 5% among non-smokers, 15% among occasional smokers, 18% among ex-smokers and 33% among regular smokers has experienced e.cigarettes. The experimentation rate of e.cigarettes is 23% among smokers who don’t plan to quit and 19% among those who plan to quit.
Conclusion: The e.cigarettes had become a familiar product to young teenagers, mostly aged between 14-17 years (10.6% in girls vs. 9.1% in boys). To prevent this initiation, we recommend regulating e.cigarettes to forbid any promotion and sale to teenagers under 18.
- © 2013 ERS
