The age at which people start vaping is dropping, almost in step with the growing awareness of the risks associated with this practice, which experts see as a gateway to smoking. Twelve, the age at which young people begin compulsory secondary education, is also the average age at which they become familiar with vaping.
“We’re seeing how the vape, with its harmless appearance, has become the first smoking device among adolescents. The average age of initiation is already 12 years old in many cases, and this is extremely worrying because it means early exposure to nicotine.” These are the words of Bartomeu Massuti, head of Oncology at the Alicante General Hospital, who is also secretary of the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP).
According to the Group, more than 54 percent of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 have already vaped, and among younger children, 25.2 percent of those between the ages of 12 and 13 have used these devices at least once. “This means that many minors come into contact with nicotine even before adolescence,” Massuati stressed.
The GECP has also reiterated that e-cigarettes are not risk-free. The perception of their safety is completely erroneous. Most of these products contain nicotine and other toxic substances, something that many people are unaware of. The most serious failing is that many of them don’t even indicate this on the label. Another worrying aspect of this phenomenon is the growing feminization of consumption. In the case of tobacco, 36.8 percent of adolescent girls admit to having tried it, compared to 30 percent of boys. Regarding vaping, the figures are also higher: 56.8 percent of adolescent girls compared to 52.5 percent of boys.
There’s a higher percentage of women than men using vapes. There’s quite a bit of controversy about whether women are actually more likely to develop lung cancer than men, for example, but there’s still no concrete relationship that vaping causes more lung cancer in women than in men.
Experts believe that it is still too early to assess the consequences of vaping in consultation, although it is noted that they will be just as harmful as those of tobacco: ultimately, vaping contains nicotine and a series of carcinogens, and it is believed that these products, like traditional tobacco products, have the same side effects.