More than 18 million middle and high school
students in the United States encounter advertisements for e-cigarettes in
movies, on television, in newspapers, in stores, online, and in magazines. That
is roughly 7 in 10 young people in the country, according to the Center for
Disease Control's Vital Signs report.
Themes of rebellion, independence, and sex are
seen in many of the e-cigarette and other tobacco-product ads. Previous
research has shown advertising tobacco products causes young people to pick up
those products and start using them. Marketing of e-cigarettes in unrestricted,
and it has the potential to reverse decades of progress and effort to reduce
tobacco use among young people.
Tactics used decades ago to entice potential
tobacco users are now being used to entice America's youth to purchase
e-cigarettes, according to CDC Director Tim Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.
The 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey, or NYTS,
revealed 68.9 percent of students in middle and high school come across
advertisements for e-cigarettes in some form of media. More than half (54.8
percent) of youth encountered the ads in retail settings, compared with 39.8
percent of youth who saw them online, 36.5 percent who saw them in movies or
television, and 30.4 percent in magazines and newspapers.
Nicotine delivered at a young age can cause
long-term harm to the brain, lead to sustained tobacco use and addiction. As of
2014, e-cigarettes are the most commonly used form of tobacco among youth. From
2011 to 2014, e-cigarette use rose from 1.5 to 13.4 percent among high school
students and 1.6 to 3.9 percent among middle school students. In 2011, spending
on e-cigarettes was around $6.4 million, compared to $115 million in 2014.
To help reduce the use of e-cigarettes:
- Limit sales of tobacco products to venues that do not admit youth
- Restrict proximity to schools of stores that sell tobacco
- Limit the number of stores that can sell tobacco
- Require e-cigarettes be sold only through face-to-face interactions
- Require an age-verification step to complete online transactions for tobacco products