By Hannah Guzik
About 10 percent of California teenagers have used electronic cigarettes, a rate that is higher than national estimates, according to a new study.
Scientists from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research analyzed data from the 2014 California Health Interview Survey, which interviewed 1,052 adolescents ages 12–17.
The study cites previous research that found that in 2012, 6.5 percent of teens had tried e-cigarettes nationwide.
“The health effects of e-cigarettes are of growing concern,” the report states.
E-cigarettes are made of aerosolized nicotine, and their vapor “contains many of the harmful toxins found in conventional cigarettes, including formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, cadmium, lead and others,” the researchers wrote.
Researchers found that teens who had tried conventional cigarettes were more likely to have also tried e-cigarettes.
“While the long-term health impacts of e-cigarette use are not understood, they pose a great danger because they are closely linked to conventional cigarette use,” the report states.
Adolescents from middle or upper class families were also more likely to have tried e-cigarettes. The same was true for teens who were U.S. citizens and spoke only English at home.
“Use of e-cigarettes in this study was higher than previously reported national estimates,” the researchers wrote. “Differences in lifetime e-cigarette use by citizenship status and language spoken at home suggest that less acculturated individuals use e-cigarettes at lower rates.”
The report was published in the peer-reviewed journal Addictive Behaviors in January.
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