Teens get the message that cigarettes are harmful, but they get mixed messaging or none at all about the risks of marijuana or e-cigarettes, according to a small new study in California.
“Perhaps if we are so good about communicating risks of cigarettes but we don’t communicate about e-cigarettes, it sends a message that they are safe,” said lead author Maria L. Roditis of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco.
“That’s not a message we want people to have,” Roditis told Reuters Health.
She and her co-author Bonnie Halpern-Felsher of Stanford University gathered nine teenage girls and 15 teen boys from a school district in Northern California with high rates of substance use. During six group meetings lasting up to 75 minutes, Roditis led discussions about what good or bad things might happen from using cigarettes, e-cigarettes or marijuana. The participants were also asked where and from whom they had learned about the products.
The teens also filled out questionnaires about their use of cigarettes, e-cigarettes and marijuana as well as how easy it was to access these products.
In general, the teens were aware of the dangers of cigarettes, and had seen public health campaigns against smoking on TV. But they were less sure about the risks of marijuana and e-cigarettes, and seemed to feel they were less dangerous and carried more benefits, like the stress relief and high from smoking pot or the “classy” appearance of e-cigarettes, as reported in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Kids also said e-cigarettes might help you quit smoking regular cigarettes.
They often pointed to the media, family, friends and the school environment as information sources on these products.
E-cigarettes and marijuana are not the same as cigarettes, but they do need similar public health messaging, especially targeted to kids who may otherwise start using these products, Halpern-Felsher said.
“The issue is we’re not really putting the message out at all really,” Roditis said. While the teens said they had seen commercials about the dangers of cigarette smoke, the only commercials they had seen about e-cigarettes were ones promoting them, she noted.
California has begun a TV-based public health campaign about e-cigarettes, but most places in the US have not, she said.
“It’s important for us to lay out the myths and counter those myths,” Halpern-Felsher told Reuters Health by phone.
For one thing, smoking an e-cigarette should not be called ‘vaping’, because they do not contain water vapour, they contain aerosol, which is not harmless, she said.
Also, the available evidence suggests that e-cigarettes do not help cigarette smokers quit, she said.
States considering legalising recreational marijuana should consider how to regulate the marketing and sale of these products to make sure they do not target minors, Roditis said. E-cigarettes are already on the market, and with at least 400 flavour varieties available, their popularity has skyrocketed among teens.
“Now we’re trying to uncrack those eggs,” she said.
“It’s a really important paper because it really shows that the level of ignorance that kids have about these products is leading to a lot of use,” said Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF.
Glantz has worked with both authors in the past but was not involved in the new research.
Since it can be a legal medical therapy, many people believe marijuana smoke carries no harms, which is not true, he told Reuters Health.
“The evidence base is smaller because it is illegal, it’s very hard to do any research on it,” he said.
Marijuana smoke actually has worse effects on vascular function than cigarette smoke in animal studies, and smoking pot, like e-cigarettes, is often a gateway for young people to start smoking cigarettes, he said.
For marijuana and e-cigarettes, “the right way to think about it is like cigarettes,” Glantz said. “It shouldn’t be illegal, but people shouldn’t be using them.”
“People need to know that these things are not harmless,” he said.