Original articleElectronic Cigarette Use Among Korean Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study of Market Penetration, Dual Use, and Relationship to Quit Attempts and Former Smoking
Section snippets
Data
The KYRBWS is an anonymous, Internet-based, self-administered questionnaire administered in class to a nationally representative cross-section of middle and high school students [15]. The 2011 sample consisted of 79,202 students age 13–18 years in 2,400 classrooms (secondary sampling units), consisting of all students in three classes from each of 400 middle and 400 high schools (primary sampling units) from 129 strata identified using a stratified multistage cluster sampling method. The first
Results
Sample demographics appear in Table 1.
A total of 85.5% of seventh-grade students (age 13 years) were never-users of conventional cigarettes or e-cigarettes, compared with 66.5% of 12th-grade students (Table 2). Among 12th graders, 16.9% currently smoked cigarettes (past 30 days) and 5.9% currently used e-cigarettes, including 5.0% who were currently dual users of conventional cigarettes and e-cigarettes.
E-cigarette use was significantly higher for boys (7.8% vs. 1.8% for girls; p < .001), older
Discussion
The findings of high dual use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes show that e-cigarettes are not being used as a substitute for cigarettes among Korean adolescents. Furthermore, the significant association between current e-cigarette use and higher levels of cigarette consumption compared with ever– and never–e-cigarette users suggests that e-cigarettes do not have a role in reducing harm among these teens, and in fact may be increasing harm.
Although e-cigarettes have rapidly become widely
Funding Sources
This research was funded in part by the National Cancer Institute, by United States National Institutes of Health Grant CA-113710, by University of California Tobacco Related Diseases Research Program Grant 21FT-0040, and by the Hellmann Family Fund. The sponsors had no role in study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, the writing of the report or the decision to submit the paper for publication.
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Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest or financial disclosures to report.
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Current address: National Evidence-Based Healthcare Collaborating Agency, Seoul, Republic of Korea.