Does e-cigarette experimentation increase the transition to daily smoking among young ever-smokers in France?

Introduction:
This text is a summary of a scientific study examining the relationship between e-cigarette use and the transition to daily smoking among young smokers in France. The study uses a large national representative survey and an inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) approach to analyze the data. The key points section will provide an overview of the study design and major findings.

Key points:

* The study uses retrospective data from a French national representative survey conducted in 2017.
* The sample included 21,401 ever-smokers aged 17.
* The outcome variable was declaring daily cigarette smoking in the past 30 days.
* The exposure variable was defined as "ever e-cigarette use in age similar or lower than that of the onset of daily smoking."
* The analysis used an IPTW approach with stabilized inverse Propensity Scores (PS) as weights.
* The results show that adolescents who experimented with e-cigarette were less likely than those who did not to transition to daily smoking at 17.
* The negative effect of e-cigarette on the transition to daily smoking was still present when individuals experimented with e-cigarette before they experimented with smoking.
* The study controlled for confounding variables such as age, gender, parental occupational status, family structure, and substance use.

Main message:
The study provides evidence that e-cigarette experimentation does not increase the risk of transitioning to daily smoking at 17 among ever-smokers who also experimented with e-cigarettes. The study's findings contribute to the ongoing debate about the potential risks and benefits of e-cigarette use, particularly among young people. Further studies are needed to investigate the longer-term role of vaping on future smoking habits with the use of causal inference methods. Overall, the results suggest that e-cigarettes may not be a gateway to smoking for young people, and could potentially serve as an alternative to tobacco smoking for a growing proportion of adolescents that are losing interest in smoking. However, adolescent vaping should still be closely monitored to prevent any public health issues.

Chyderiotis S, Benmarhnia T, Beck F, Spilka S, Legleye S. Does e-cigarette experimentation increase the transition to daily smoking among young ever-smokers in France? Drug and alcohol dependence. 2020;208:107853. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2020.107853