Online e-cigarette ads persuasive for teenagers

While many forms of e-cigarette advertising increase the odds that teens will try the devices, a new U.S. study suggests that they are most enticed by promotions they see online (Source: “Teens most drawn to e-cigarettes by online ads,” Reuters, April 25, 2016).

For the study, researchers analyzed data from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey, which asked teens about how often they used different types of tobacco products as well as how frequently they encountered ads for these items.

When middle school kids said they routinely viewed e-cigarette ads online, they were almost three times more likely to use the devices than their peers who never saw ads. High schoolers who frequently watched online ads were about two times more likely to use e-cigarettes.

Adolescents who try e-cigarettes may be more than twice as likely to move on to smoking conventional cigarettes than teens who have never tried the devices, previous research has found.