The risk that the electronic cigarette could be a gateway to smoking for young people and more generally non-smokers is widely debated. Seeing people vaping has been linked to an increased urge to smoke and to smoke even more. It is highly likely that television advertising for e-cigarettes may also encourage current or former smokers to resume. This is what the study presented in the journal Health Communication which ultimately suggests that exposure to an image of vaping or smoking has the same overall effect on the urge to smoke.
The By Erin K. Maloney et Joseph N. Cappella from the University of Annenberg (Pennsylvania) conducted this study on more than 800 participants, 301 daily smokers, 272 intermittent smokers, and 311 former smokers who were asked to watch e-cigarette advertisements, showing a user being to "vape", or an e-cigarette in your hand. Then, the desire to smoke, the intentions and behaviors of the participants were assessed. The results are significant:
- Regular smokers who have seen the e-cigarette ads have more desire (" urges ") That regular smokers who have not seen the pub.
- Pubs showing users in action, vaping create a stronger desire to take a cigarette, that the ads or the user simply holds his e-cigarette.
- Former smokers who have seen e-cigarette ads report losing some confidence in their abstinence capacity, compared to former smokers not exposed to advertising.
- 35% of daily smokers exposed to ads with "vaping" report having smoked a cigarette after the experience, vs. 22% of daily smokers exposed to pubs without vaping and 23% of daily smokers not exposed to advertising. It is therefore the vision of someone consuming that increases the desire to smoke a classic cigarette.
Advertising of the e-cigarette should obey the same prohibitions than that for tobacco products. However, given the phenomenon of enthusiasm for the device, specialized points of sale or resellers on the Internet do not spare their efforts. The authors thus estimate advertising spending at $ 1 billion this year, an envelope that could grow by 50% over the next 4 years. Here, the authors were able to gather, via a search on the net, more than a dozen advertisements for the e-cigarette.
It is more broadly the global exposure to different products associated with smoking such as visual representations of cigarettes, but also of ashtrays, matches, lighters, actors smoking, or e-cigarettes which increase the urge to smoke and weaken the resolutions of repentant smokers. In any case, the study provides additional evidence of the impact of representations of the device in the media on the resumption of smoking. And the reverse is not true! Exposure to real cigarettes smokers does not increase the urge to smoke an e-cigarette.
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Source: Santelog.com - Health Communication
