Teen access to e-cigarettes faces scrutiny

As smoking of electronic cigarettes among youths rises, Chapman University assistant professor Georgiana Bostean and her student team are studying the link between “vaping” and aggressive marketing of e-cigarettes to youth, including the proximity of smoke shops to schools.

The battery-operated penlike vape devices come in a rainbow of colors and designs and are commonly filled with a mix of liquid nicotine and a flavor called “juice,” with colorful names such as Cotton Candy Clouds and Insane Candy Cane. The liquid formula is heated by the device and the vapor (as opposed to smoke) is inhaled like a cigarette.

E-cigarettes essentially deliver nicotine – a stimulant – without the other ingredients that come in regular cigarettes, such as tar and carbon monoxide.

While researchers at UC Irvine and Georgetown University, among other universities, have found evidence that nicotine may have positive effects on an adult brain, the effect of vaping and liquid nicotine use on the overall health of young people is unknown.

E-cigarettes were initially marketed as a way to help smokers quit. But Bostean suggests that youthful marketing of e-cigarettes and the high number of unregulated specialty retailers may make young people more susceptible to e-cigarette use.

The Centers for Disease Control reported that cigarette smoking by youth is down, while e-cigarette use is up. The use of e-cigarettes by teenagers doubled between 2011 and 2012, according to the CDC. More than a quarter-million youth who had never smoked a cigarette used electronic cigarettes in 2013.

Another more recent report, by Monitoring the Future, also found that more students in in middle school and high school are vaping than smoking.

Marketing and local restrictions 

Locally, restrictions on the use of e-cigarettes vary. Seal Beach was the first Orange County city to regulate the sales of e-cigarettes and vaping. Ordinances adopted earlier this year treat e-cigarettes equally to traditional tobacco products.

Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, Buena Park, San Clemente, Laguna Niguel, Irvine and Costa Mesa are in line to follow suit.

Roughly one-third of Orange County 11th-graders have tried e-cigarettes, according to the 2013-14 California Healthy Kids Survey.

The downshift in cigarette smoking by teens has been due in part to the heavy restrictions applied to tobacco marketing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Since 1971, there has been a ban on TV and radio ads for cigarette and other tobacco products. Newer FDA regulations put tobacco products behind store counters.

Meanwhile, there are no regulations on vaping ads. E-cigarette brands VUSE, made by old-school cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.’s subsidiary R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., and Lorillard Technologies Inc.’s blu eCigs both advertise on TV.

Advertising restrictions have not been applied to electronic cigarettes because the devices don’t contain tobacco, though the FDA has proposed extending its oversight to e-cigarettes.

So far, Bostean’s team has observed 22 e-cigarette retailers in Santa Ana to see whether there’s a link between proximity to schools and use of e-cigarettes. Research team leader Nate Vorapharuek, 21, said many of the locations are within a quarter-mile to a half-mile from schools.

There are marked differences in how traditional tobacco products are sold vs. e-cigarettes, Bostean said. For one, e-cigarettes are more visible inside the store and from the outside looking in. E-cigarettes are also more accessible.

“Many of the smoke shops were selling vape cigarettes on a counter, at eye level next to the candy,” Bostean said.

For the second half of the research, the researchers will observe Costa Mesa retailers.

Danger inside 

Because e-cigarettes, which have been around for a decade, are unregulated by the FDA, the nicotine levels in the liquids are at the discretion of the mixer, said student researcher Katie Henderson, 21.

Ingestion and even topical exposure to the concentrated liquid nicotine used in home-brewed mixes can be extremely dangerous, even lethal, said Lee Cantrell, San Diego division director of the California Poison Control System.

“Ten to 15 milligrams per kilogram of body weight could be potentially lethal,” Cantrell said.

Up to half of all the California exposure cases involving liquid nicotine are children – 140 on record this year alone, Cantrell said.

Bostean’s primary research goal is aimed at identifying social trends and marketing influences. Next year, she plans to have students do a chemical analysis of the liquid.

Contact the writer: Brittany Hanson / Staff Writer bhanson@ocregister.com

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