They’ve appeared on television and in magazines — Katy Perry, Johnny Depp and other celebrities vaping electronic cigarettes. The high-tech gadgets, marketed as a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes, seem to be available everywhere, from Internet suppliers and specialty vaping shops to 24-hour convenience marts.

E-cigarettes have become the fashionable new electronic toy. With vape flavorings like bubble gum, Dr Pepper and cotton candy, teens have been taking the bait. In 2014, e-cigarettes surpassed cigarettes as the most commonly used tobacco product by middle school and high school students, according to an annual U.S. survey.

Teens’ fascination with this nicotine-dispensing smoking alternative worries physicians and toxicologists. Data from a growing number of studies indicate that electronic cigarettes are far from harmless. They also pose their own addiction risk.

Chemicals in e-cigarettes can damage lung tissue and reduce the lungs’ ability to keep germs and other harmful substances from entering the body, studies have found (SN: 12/27/14, p. 20). The flavored e-cig liquids can do their own damage. And the lungs — not to mention the young brain (see “Nico-teen brain,” below) — may be particularly vulnerable to nicotine’s effects.

“What I can say definitively is that nicotine is harmful to the developing teenage brain,” says Mitch Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Md. “No teenager, no young person, should be using any tobacco or nicotine-containing products.” E-cigarettes, he says, are among the products that should be kept firmly out of the hands — and mouths — of adolescents.

Science News