Joseph Robinson thought up the first e-cigarette in 1927. However, it wasn’t until 1963 when Herbert Gilbert’s “smokeless non-tobacco cigarette” made the concept of vaping popular. It wouldn’t be until the mid-2000s when the Chinese firm Hon Lik manufactured the first modern e-cigarette. The device and resulting industry have since ballooned into a more than $61B global market.
Recent polling and studies conducted by Gallup reveal that vaping is much more common among Americans under 30. This coincides with a drop in conventional smoking among the same age group.
Leading the pollsters to speculate “that vaping is functioning as a substitute, which, if true, may have positive health implications.”
Gallup has collected long-term trend data on smoking for years. In the early 2000s, surveys revealed that “about a third of 18- to 29-year-olds reported smoking cigarettes in the previous week”. Today, the number is half that and smoking among those aged 18-29 is now lower than smoking for ages 30 to 64. Not an insignificant shift in age characteristics of smokers.
The poll also highlighted the correlation between current smokers and those most likely to vape. Which makes sense since both are nicotine delivery systems. The bottom lines of the survey were that by and large, those most likely to begin vaping are people who smoke conventional cigarettes, and that “the advent of electronic cigarettes could, on balance, be having an overall positive effect on the health of the American population.”
Regardless of where you stand on the data, the health community is in general agreement. And smoking expert Dr. Kenneth Warner of the University of Michigan School of Public Health reiterated in a Gallup podcast, “I personally believe based on my research that e-cigarettes are more beneficial than harmful to the public’s health because research suggests that vaping is helping at least a subset of smokers to quit smoking.”
The original findings from the survey can be found here.
