E-cigarette Ads Increase Tobacco Craving

If you thought that smoking e-cigarettes will help you quit smoking, you need to think again. A new study has shown that watching e-cigarette advertisement that feature on the television can make people crave for tobacco, regardless of whether they did or did not smoke before.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied more than 800 daily, intermittent, and former smokers who watched e-cigarette advertising, and then took a survey to determine smoking urges, intentions, and behaviors.

The scientists observed that more daily smokers who viewed advertisements with vaping smoked a tobacco cigarette during the experiment than daily smokers who viewed advertisements without vaping and daily smokers who did not view advertisements. Over 35% of the daily smokers in the condition that showed vaping reported having a tobacco cigarette during the study versus 22% of daily smokers who saw advertisements without vaping, and about 23% of daily smokers who did not see any advertising.

Researchers Erin K. Maloney, Ph.D. and Joseph N. Cappella, Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania wrote, "Given the sophistication of cigarette marketing in the past and the exponential increase in advertising dollars allotted to e-cigarette promotion in the past year, it should be expected that advertisements for these products created by big tobacco companies will maximize smoking cues in their advertisements, and if not regulated, individuals will be exposed to much more e-cigarette advertising on a daily basis."

The study is published in the journal Health Communication.

Source: Medindia