ÐÓ°É´«Ã½

2019-2020

News Release

REF NO.: 20

SUBJECT: School of Pharmacy e-cigarette research published in major medical journal

DATE: November 5, 2019

An associate professor in the School of Pharmacy has published the paper, Association of Canada’s Provincial Bans on E-cigarette Sales to Minors With E-cigarette Use Among Youths, in JAMA Pediatrics.
 
In Canada, e-cigarette use among youth almost doubled between 2014-17, which risks “creating a new generation of nicotine-addicted youths who face a higher risk of smoking combustible cigarettes and are subject to negative outcomes beyond the adverse physiological effects of nicotine,” writes Dr. Hai Nguyen.
 
E-cigarette sales to minors have been banned in several U.S. states and in all Canadian provinces; there is limited knowledge about the extent to which these bans can reduce e-cigarette use among youths, however.
                                                                                                
Dr. Nguyen, who is the Canada Research Chair in Health Policy Evaluation and Health Care Sustainability at ÐÓ°É´«Ã½, investigated whether these bans are effective at reducing e-cigarette use among youths, and the mechanisms through which these bans worked (or failed to work).
 
He found that banning e-cigarette sales to minors helped reduce the rise in e-cigarette use by youths. However, he also uncovered evidence that youths responded to the bans by increasingly obtaining e-cigarettes through their social sources (friends, relatives, etc.).
 
“The study’s findings suggest that this policy should be supplemented with other measures that can reduce young people’s desire to obtain e-cigarettes through social sources, such as a ban on products with flavours that appeal to youths and children,” said Dr. Nguyen.
 
The full paper can be found on the .

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