Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published data that show an overwhelming connection between advertisements for electronic cigarettes and use of e-cigarettes among youth.
The research, available in the Pediatrics journal, agrees that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to have greater authority to regulate e-cigarettes.
In light of the new research, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) released a statement about the issue.
“The CDC data reveal troubling trends about tobacco use among middle school and high school students and emphasize the increasingly urgent need for the FDA to regulate all tobacco products,” officials said in the statement. “The figures show the e-cigarette industry has been successful at marketing its products to our nation’s youth stating that middle and high school students with greater advertising exposure through retail stories, print, online and television media have higher odds of e-cigarette use.”
Until the FDA is able to regulate e-cigarettes, teenagers will bear the heaviest burden of addiction to these products.
“Until the FDA finalizes its proposal to regulate e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, tobacco companies will continue their relentless efforts to addict kids to their deadly products by marketing to them with attractive flavors, provocative advertising and celebrity endorsements,” they said. “Continued lack of regulation of products popular with youth, including e-cigarettes, cigars, hookah and other smokeless tobacco products only serves the interests of the tobacco industry to the detriment of the health of our nation’s youth.”
Researchers have not yet fully discovered how e-cigarettes affect the health of smokers or nonsmokers.
“The administration should immediately finalize the deeming rule and apply the marketing and advertising restrictions that currently apply to cigarettes to e-cigarettes and all other tobacco products,” they said. “With full authority, the FDA can combat the tobacco industry’s aggressive marketing tactics of these unregulated products to children, which remains a significant threat to public health.”
