New research suggests e-cigarettes may be a gateway device to nicotine addiction among teens.
Researchers at the University of Southern California found that 10 percent of teens in the study were currently using personal vaporizers. They found that those users were much more likely to also smoke cigarettes, HealthDay reported.
Forty percent of teenagers who use vaporizers have never smoked a conventional cigarette, "adding to the worries that the devices are attracting a whole new group of underage user, not just teens trying to quit regular cigarettes," Today reported. They fear the electronic devices may normalize smoking again.
"E-cigarettes often contain nicotine, so they may induce sort of a psychological dependency on nicotine and then may lead to future cigarette use," Jessica Barrington-Trimis, lead author of the study, told Today. "Or, e-cigarettes may lead to the normalization of smoking behaviors and that's the normalization that we're concerned with."
They also revealed that 91 percent of teens who vape have report getting positive feedback about the devices. According to HealthDay, these positive attitudes may be linked to a greater risk of teens' smoking, a trend that has been on a decline for years.
"We found that, collectively, these factors that indicate a positive social environment mean that e-cigarettes are becoming more normalized," Barrington-Trimis said.
For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from more than 2,000 11th- and 12th-graders in Southern California. They also found that teen vapers also have "e-cigarette user at home or among friends," Today reported.
"Adolescents who have three or four of their closest friends who used e-cigarettes were 104 times as likely than those with no friends who currently used e-cigarettes, to be a current e-cigarette user themselves. So that's a very strong finding," Barrington-Trimis said.
The findings are detailed in the journal Pediatrics.
