The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a long-awaited report on Tuesday on electronic cigarettes that called for regulation of the devices and their contents, as well as bans on indoor use, advertising and sales to minors.
The United Nations health agency, in a report to be debated by member states at a meeting in October, voiced concern at the concentration of the multi-billion dollar market in the hands of transnational tobacco companies.
The WHO urged a range of "regulatory options", including prohibiting e-cigarette makers from making health claims - such as that they help people quit smoking - until they provide "convincing supporting scientific evidence and obtain regulatory approval".
E-cigarettes should be regulated to "minimize content and emissions of toxicants", and those solutions with fruit, candy-like and alcohol-drinks flavors should be banned, it said, and vending machines should be removed in almost all locations.
In the same context, US researchers said on Monday that electronic cigarettes may be more tempting to non-smoking youths than conventional cigarettes, and once young people have tried e-cigarettes they are more inclined to give regular cigarettes a try.
E-cigarettes should be regulated to "minimize content and emissions of toxicants", and those solutions with fruit, candy-like and alcohol-drinks flavors should be banned, it said, and vending machines should be removed in almost all locations.
A report, released by a team at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lends evidence to the argument that electronic cigarettes encourage youth smoking.
The study, based on nationally representative youth surveys, found that more than a quarter-million adolescents and teens who had never smoked used an electronic cigarette in 2013, a threefold increase from 2011.
E-cigarettes are slim, reusable, metal-tube devices containing nicotine-laced liquids that come in exotic flavors. When users puff, the nicotine is heated and released as a vapor containing no tar, unlike conventional cigarette smoke.
Health experts have raised concerns that the burgeoning $2 billion e-cigarette industry, which has been virtually unregulated, would reverse gains in the decades-long effort to curb youth smoking in the United States. Just 15.7 percent of US teenagers reported smoking in 2013, the lowest rate on record.
In the CDC study, researchers analyzed data from the 2011, 2012, and 2013 National Youth Tobacco Surveys of students in grades 6-12. They found that more than 263,000 who had never smoked a conventional cigarette used e-cigarettes in 2013, up from 79,000 in 2011.
Among non-smoking youth who had tried electronic cigarettes, 43.9 percent said they intended to smoke conventional cigarettes within the next year, compared with 21.5 percent of those who had never used e-cigarettes.
Lorillard Inc leads the US e-cigarette market, while Reynolds American Inc and Altria Group Inc are rolling out their own brands nationwide this summer. A Wells Fargo analyst report in July projected that US sales of e-cigarettes would outpace conventional ones by 2020.
REUTERS