Some people surveyed say that they started smoking after vaping as a youth.
CHARLOTTETOWN — The Lung Association on Prince Edward Island conducted a recent survey among youth who have used vaping products.
The results of the survey found that many of these youth vapers moved on to smoking cigarettes after using vapor products.
The was done with funding from the Lung Association and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
According to CBC and Radio Canada, the association reached out to 273 vapers on PEI between the ages of 16 to 24 years through an ad on Instagram.
The youth then file a voluntary questionnaire that took 15 minutes long.
The respondents were not selected at random, with no margin of error can be calculated for the ending results.
Such a survey was conducted between April of 2020 to January of 2021.
24.2 percent of the respondents said that they began smoking cigarettes after they started vaping.
“This speaks to how much these youth are addicted to these products and also highlights the importance of nicotine caps,” said Dr. Mohammed Al-Hamdani, the survey’s lead investigator, in a press statement to CBC online.
Al-Hamdani added that the addictive nature of the products contributes to the gateway effect for nearly a quarter of the survey respondents.
Most of the vapers surveyed, 75 percent, were also using products with the highest nicotine content available on the Canadian market.
That’s about 50 to 60 mg/ml, according to the survey.
Dr. Al-Hamdani proposed that nicotine content should be capped at 20 mg/ml — this is the standard for nicotine caps in the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Lawmakers in the United States, including the Food and Drug Administration, want to implement regulations that also cap nicotine concentrations at 20 mg/ml.
Al-Hamdani also proposes higher taxation on vaping products to limit the product availability for youth throughout the province.
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