Millions of children hooked on vaping: WHO warns of surge in e-cigarette use among youth

E-CIGARETTES are fuelling an alarming new wave of nicotine addiction, with millions of children now hooked on vaping, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday.

In countries that have the data, children are on average nine times more likely than adults to vape, the WHO said.

The United Nations health agency said the industry was promoting vapes as supposedly less harmful products than cigarettes – but in fact was aggressively targeting young people and getting children addicted.

More than 100 million people are vaping, according to the WHO’s first global estimate of e-cigarette use.

They include at least 86 million adults, mostly in high-income countries – and at least 15 million children aged 13 to 15.

“E-cigarettes are fuelling a new wave of nicotine addiction,” WHO director of health determinants, promotion and prevention Etienne Krug says in a statement.

“They are marketed as harm reduction but, in reality, are hooking kids on nicotine earlier and risk undermining decades of progress.”

Globally, people are smoking less, with the number of tobacco users dropping from 1.38 billion in 2000 to 1.2 billion in 2024, while the world’s population has swelled.

However, one in five adults worldwide are still addicted to tobacco.

“Millions of people are stopping, or not taking up, tobacco use thanks to tobacco control efforts,” WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus says in the statement.

In response, the tobacco industry “is fighting back with new nicotine products, aggressively targeting young people”, Ghebreyesus adds.

Twelve countries are seeing tobacco use rising, the WHO says in its global report on trends in tobacco use prevalence.

“These reversals… represent millions more people at risk of disease, disability and premature death,” says WHO assistant director general Jeremy Farrar.

Worldwide, smoking reduction is happening more quickly among women than men.

Farrar says tobacco use was killing more than seven million people every year, while second-hand smoke killed over one million.

Smoking damages “every single part of the body”, Farrar told reporters, adding that doing it indoors around children was “irresponsible and unacceptable”.

Around 40 million children aged 13 to 15 currently use tobacco, or one in 10, says Farrar.

In some countries, children were “well under 10” when they started using tobacco, says Alison Commar, the global report’s lead author.

Commar warns children were being “very heavily exposed” to tobacco advertising online.

“It’s really subtle. It’s very difficult to regulate,” she says, with social media influencers using products while discussing something else.

She told reporters that e-cigarettes were “very much a gateway for young people to move later into tobacco, or to maintain a nicotine addiction as they grow older”.

– AFP via IOL News

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