FEATURE
DEB UN Kin g
THE GATEWAY EFFECT
If vaping really does lead to smoking, then why
does cigarette use continue to decline?
BY Gordon Stribling
O
n January 23 2018, the United States National
Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine
(NASEM) published their FDA-commissioned
Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes report.
The academy examined over 800 peer-reviewed studies
investigating everything from the contents of e-cigarette
vapour in the atmosphere to the risks of poor-quality
batteries exploding.
While the report gained significant international attention, it
mostly just reinforced what we already knew about vaping:
e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful than combustible
cigarettes, offering smokers the opportunity to reduce their
risk of developing a smoking-related illness.
But the press release also stated,
“There is substantial evidence that e-cigarette use by
youth and young adults increases their risk of ever using
conventional cigarettes.”
It was this damning conclusion that the US media latched
onto. And you can hardly blame them. As almost-daily
news stories would attest, underage vaping in schools
has become a serious problem in the past year. But one
thing both sides of the debate agree on is that under-18s
shouldn’t be vaping. What we need to be asking is what
they are vaping, why they are vaping and will their vaping
to lead to smoking?
Gateway models have been around since the 1950s,
when drug enforcement authorities began warning people
that marijuana use led to deadly heroin use, an idea that
has long since been debunked. The term ‘gateway drug’
itself was popularised by Dr Robert L. DuPont, Jr’s book,
60 | VM16
‘Getting Tough on Gateway Drugs: A Guide for the Family’,
published in 1984. President Ronald Reagan had reignited
the country’s ‘war on drugs’ first initiated by Richard Nixon
in 1971.
DuPont opined that it was relatively unlikely for a young
person who does not use marijuana to use other drugs.
He did not suggest that marijuana is a ‘gateway’ to harder
drugs. Statistics show that only a tiny minority of people
who smoke marijuana go on to try harder drugs. But 34
years later, this cause-and-effect idea persists, though,
ironically, it is nicotine that is now demonised while
cannabis has become socially-acceptable and legal in an
increasing number of states.