Academics are warning that the widespread use of vapes is "compromising children's human rights" and are urging for stricter regulation of e-cigarettes to safeguard young people.
Experts highlight concerning trends, including children skipping lessons to vape and struggling to concentrate in classrooms due to nicotine dependence.
A new analysis, published in The BMJ by a team of researchers from the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, highlights that teenagers are "particularly sensitive" to nicotine exposure.
This exposure, they caution, "may have long-term effects on attention, cognition, memory and mood."
The study also notes that young people are more prone to nicotine addiction, which can exacerbate problems with addiction and substance abuse later in life.
Academics, including researcher Tom Gatehouse from the University of Bath, also highlight how vape use “may act as a gateway to tobacco smoking”.
But they said that “governments often overlook the harms to children, influenced by industry claims around reducing harm to adults who smoke”.
They said any potential benefit of vapes is for current smokers who switch to e-cigarettes.
“The potential to increase cessation among this group should not be misconstrued as reducing harm for the population as a whole, and it does not justify making harmful and highly addictive products widely available to larger populations of mostly non-smokers, including children,” they wrote.
They point out that children are now using e-cigarettes at higher rates than adults.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) called for urgent action to tackle youth vaping in 2023, and the academics added: “Such action is not only crucial from a public health perspective but is required by international human rights law.”
They said the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has “helped shape policies affecting the health of children”.
This, along with the WHO’s tobacco framework, “can provide a legal basis for e-cigarette regulation which puts children’s health first”, they said.
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