E-cigarettes are now widely used among high school and even elementary school children in countries like the USA where the tobacco control policies are high.
The question now is: are the ads for e-cigarettes drawing the children towards using tobacco? Instead of drawing the ‘real’ smokers away from the nicotine to a milder version of it, they are inadvertently attracting more and more adolescents to give it a try.
Namely, according to a study funded by the Department of Health, Cambridge University researchers found that the children who were shown the ads for flavored e-cigarettes were interested to buy and try these cigarettes as opposed to the other group of students who weren’t exposed to the ads.
According to the report from 2016 by the University of Cambridge “Advertisements featuring e-cigarettes with flavors such as chocolate and bubble gum are more likely to attract school children to buy and try e-cigarettes than those featuring non-flavored e-cigarettes”.
Children aged 11 – 18 are using more and more e-cigarettes and this increase has been particularly evident in countries where ads are being shown, like in England and in the USA.
The biggest concern about e-cigarettes, according to the scientists from Behavior and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, is that they could very well lead to the tobacco consumption.
There are as much as 8,000 flavors of e-cigarettes marketed in the world, including the bubble-gum and chocolate which are very appealing especially to younger generations.
While the jury is still out on this issue, the fact remains that the flavored e-cigarettes can mask the fact that these are still cigarettes even though they’re made to taste like they’re not.
