E-Cigarettes and Future Marijuana Usage: A Study You Will Want to Know About :

So much has been written about the health concerns of electronic cigarette (e-cigarettes) that we have even compiled these into a collection of articles easily accessible on our website. While conventional cigarette smoking has been associated with increased usage of marijuana, e-cigarette use by teenagers and its association with use of marijuana has not been studied until this week when we release a study by Dai et al. (10.1542/peds.2017-3787).  More than 10,000 teenagers who were never marijuana users were enrolled in a longitudinal cohort for a year and then asked about their use of both products over that year.  Sadly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, use of e-cigarettes was found to be associated with increased marijuana use, especially in teens ages 12-14.  The increased use of e-cigarettes and the potential for easier access to marijuana as states consider its legalization for adults raises significant concern that more teens will begin to use marijuana. You will want to smoke out the detailed data and analyses in this article and then share the findings with your teen patients and their families to raise awareness of the increased risk of marijuana use when using e-cigarettes.