E-cigarettes not a substantial gateway to smoking for young people

young person holding cigarettes and an e-cigarette - E-cigarette use in England among young adults between 2007 and 2018 did not appear to be associated with substantial increases or decreases in the prevalence of smoking uptake, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Several longitudinal observational studies have previously suggested that e-cigarette use may act as a "gateway" towards later use of cigarettes in adolescents. However, these findings may reflect shared vulnerability in that the same young people who would try e-cigarettes would also more likely later to smoke cigarettes. One way to avoid this self-selection bias is to assess the impact at the population level rather than the individual level, using an approach called time series analysis. Using this method, the current study measured the gateway effect of vaping by looking at the association between prevalence of e-cigarette use among young adults and prevalence of uptake of smoking generally, including among people who have never smoked. The researchers reasoned that if a gateway effect existed, there ought to be associated population-wide changes in the prevalence of smoking uptake when the prevalence of vaping changed. In the new study, published in the journal Addiction , the authors found no statistically significant association between the prevalence of e-cigarette use and ever having smoked regularly (used as an indicator of uptake) among those aged 16 to 24.