Vaping Could Almost Triple Smoking Initiation.

• Position: TEENAGE TOBACCO USE

Teenage boys who vape are almost three times as likely to start smoking as other teen boys with similar risk profiles and more than two times as likely to try smokeless tobacco, according to a study in Addictive Behaviors.

Unlike most previous research suggesting a link between vaping and tobacco, this study did not simply follow young people over time to make a connection between the two behaviors, as some have questioned the validity of those longitudinal studies, arguing that kids who took up smoking might have done so whether they vaped or not, notes lead researcher Brittney Hamilton of the Center for Tobacco Research.

"For an ideal study, from a purely scientific perspective, we'd give everybody an e-cigarette, follow them for a few years and see if they start smoking, then rewind the clock and not give them an e-cigarette--or we'd randomly assign kids to vape or not to vape. We...