Vaping Ads Make Smoking Tobacco Seem Healthier
Up to 50% of children who try tobacco cigarettes for the first time are likely to become regular smokers within three years. At the same time, experimentation with e-cigarettes is increasing. It is now more common for 11- to 15-year-olds in England, for example, to have tried an e-cigarette than a regular cigarette.
Companies selling e-cigarettes generally market themselves as helping people to quit smoking, or as offering a healthier alternative to tobacco cigarettes. In a recent study carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of North Carolina, a group of more than 400 English children aged 11 - 16 who had never ‘vaped’ before were randomly selected to test the effects of e-cigarette advertising.
Those who were shown campaigns that both glamourised e-cigarettes and promoted them as healthy were less likely to think that smoking the odd tobacco cigarette now and then was harmful. The report claims that this finding indicates e-cigarette advertising directives, which currently do not regulate the content of marketing materials suggesting such products to be a glamourous or healthy alternative to smoking tobacco, are in need of revision as they potentially pose a threat to children’s health.
