Seeing vape pen in use boosts desire to smoke.

• Position: E-Cigarettes

Although they look less like cigarettes than their first-generation predecessors, the newer e-cigarette vape pens--also known as vaporizers--stimulate the urge to smoke as powerfully as watching someone smoke a "combustible" tobacco cigarette, suggests a study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, which found that young adult smokers exposed to the use of traditional cigarettes, first-generation e-cigarettes, or second generation vape pens experienced an immediate, significant, and lasting increase in the desire to smoke. This even extended to subjects who never had used the newer devices.

"The new e-cigarettes, known as vape pens, are now larger and more powerful devices," says study director Andrea King, professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience and director of the Clinical Addictions Research Laboratory at the University of Chicago (III.). "They have low resemblance to cigarettes, so some people were hoping they might not produce the same urge to smoke, but we found that they do stimulate the urge.

"Vape pens look different, but they share too many salient features of the act of smoking--including inhalation, exhalation, and hand-to-mouth behaviors. This makes them a potent...