The Alaska Division of Public Health found in 2015 that 18 percent of high school adolescents in the state use e-cigarettes as opposed to only 12 percent smoking traditional cigarettes.
Deputy Section Chief Andrea Fenaughty for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion says the high number of high school students using the devices worries the state for a number of reasons.
Fenaughty: “There is a lot less research on the harm. We absolutely know that cigarettes are harmful, e-cigarettes have not yet been thoroughly studied, there are studies coming out all the time trying to determine the extent of their impact on both short-term and long-term health but we don’t quite have as much data about them.”
2015 was the first year that the Youth Risk Behavior Survey asked teens if they’ve used e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. Fenaughty says the state expects teen usage rates to rise more in coming years.
She says another reason the state is concerned about the high usage of e-cigarettes in high school teens is because they are not regulated.
Fenaughty: “Unlike other products that are regulated where you need to see exactly what’s in them, e-cigarettes are not. So we currently can’t say for sure what’s in one versus another.”
Fenaughty says without knowing exactly what ingredients are in e-cigarette “juices” it’s difficult for studies to be done on the effects that the devices might have on teenage users.