it could well be that flavored electronic cigarette use inhibits youth smoking by making it much less likely that a youth is going to enjoy his or her first experience with real tobacco cigarettes. — Dr. Siegel
The argument being made by the CDC, as well as many other anti-smoking groups and advocates, is that electronic cigarettes are a gateway to youth smoking. This is predicated upon a belief that someone who smokes a tobacco or menthol flavored e-cigarette is then apt to try a tobacco cigarette. However, all empirical evidence points to the opposite being the case. More smokers are choosing non-tobacco flavors thereby creating a market for non-tobacco products as opposed to a gateway to tobacco flavors.
Store owners have told TEVA the majority of their customers want non-tobacco flavors. So why would someone who enjoys strawberry want to change to a tobacco flavor? It is akin to trying to getting someone to switch from cherry-cola to black coffee.
Vaping isn’t gateway to smoking, vaping is gateway to buying shiney things and stuff. It’s also a gateway to teaching people things about basic electronics.
I blame Smoking as the gateway to Vaping. Because of Smoking I am hopelessly addicted to Vaping I blame smoking. It is a definite Gateway To Vaping…lol
I am only a high school graduate who smoked 2 packs a day for 30yrs until I took up vaping when no other way of quitting smoking was successful, although Chantix did come close for me. Seems to me that Dr Siegel has it all backwards. Smoking is a gateway for Vaping, at least for me and countless others. Its time vapers schooled some of those who supposedly know everything, yet have it all wrong.
Dr Siegel also dispute the claim that vaping is a gateway to smoking…
Gateway Hypothesis for Electronic Cigarettes All But Destroyed: Data Show Youth Smoking at All-Time Low
Organizations that oppose electronic cigarettes, such as the CDC and FDA, and anti-smoking advocates who oppose these products, like Dr. Stanton Glantz, have been arguing that electronic cigarettes are a gateway to youth smoking. The CDC has gone so far as to claim that its own survey demonstrates that youth are starting with electronic cigarettes and then moving on to smoke real tobacco cigarettes. The CDC has warned the public that e-cigarettes lead to a lifetime addiction to smoking among our nation’s children.
Fortunately, there is a simple way to evaluate this hypothesis, at least on a preliminary basis, prior to waiting for the results of longitudinal studies. Enough youth are experimenting with electronic cigarettes, and the increase in youth e-cigarette use has been dramatic and sustained enough, that if the gateway hypothesis were correct, we would be starting to see an increase in smoking prevalence among youth due to the many new smoking initiates that were converted from e-cigarette experimentation to smoking.
The Rest of the Story
The rest of the story is that new data from the CDC itself show that the smoking rate among U.S. high school students dropped significantly in 2013, reaching the lowest level in the history of the survey (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey), which began in 1991.
Despite the tremendous proliferation of e-cigarette experimentation among youth, with a doubling of use from 2011 to 2012 alone, the CDC data show that youth smoking prevalence (among high school students) fell dramatically, from 18.1% in 2011 to 15.7% in 2013. This is a 13.3% decline in smoking prevalence over a two-year period. It is also the largest drop in youth smoking prevalence measured by this survey over the past decade.
These data all but destroy the gateway hypothesis. They demonstrate that at the current time, the evidence simply does not support the assertion that the proliferation of e-cigarette use among youth is leading to increased smoking initiation. Electronic cigarettes are not leading to a lifetime addiction to cigarette smoking among our nation’s youth.
Posted by Michael Siegel at 7:18 AM 49 Comments *
CDC was never looking for validity of their claims. They are merely a pathetic “puppet” for the master. Headlines such as “vaping leads to a life long addiction for helpless teens” is all they need to achieve the agenda for the master, most likely paid for by Big-T.
By all means thought, we should shout Dr. Siegels message as loud as we can. We need as much damage control as we can get.
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