Flavored E-Cigarettes and Subsequent Vaping in High School Students

Flavored e-cigarettes are used commonly by adolescents. The FDA prohibits flavors other than menthol and tobacco for conventional cigarettes, but these policies do not apply to e-cigarettes. To investigate whether adolescents who use e-cigarettes in nontraditional flavors are more likely to continue vaping, researchers enrolled 3396 ninth-graders from Los Angeles schools. Written surveys were administered every 6 months over 4 years.

Among 478 participants with at least one exposure to e-cigarettes, 94% used nontraditional flavors, with fruit and candy being the most common. Compared with use of traditional flavors (tobacco, menthol, mint) or flavorless e-cigarettes, use of nontraditional flavors was associated with greater odds of continued…