The American Heart Association has released its recommendations regarding the sale and usage of e-cigarettes, cautioning that the devices should be regulated to avoid enticing children to smoke while also saying that e-cigarettes could be used as a way to help some current smokers quit.
The guidelines, published online Aug. 24 in Circulation, state that clinicians "should not discourage" their patients from resorting to e-cigarettes if other approved forms of smoking cessation, such as the nicotine patch, have been exhausted. The AHA warned, however, that further studies are needed to fully understand the effects of e-cigarette usage, stressing that e-cigarettes have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an acceptable smoking cessation device and could contain low amounts of toxic chemicals that would prove more harmful than helpful to patients in the long run.
©goldy/Thinkstockphotos.com
E-cigarettes may help some smokers quit, but more research is needed to fully understand the effects of e-cigarette usage, doctors said.
"E-cigarettes have caused a major shift in the tobacco-control landscape," Aruni Bhatnagar, Ph.D., lead author of the guidelines and chair of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Louisville, Ky., said in a statement. "It’s critical that we rigorously examine the long-term impact of this new technology on public health, cardiovascular disease, and stroke, and pay careful attention to the effect of e-cigarettes on adolescents."
For now, the AHA says that clinicians should tell their patients who use e-cigarettes to set a firm quit date, warning that any device that delivers nicotine into the body is harmful and likely lethal.
"Nicotine is a dangerous and highly addictive chemical no matter what form it takes – conventional cigarettes or some other tobacco product," Dr. Elliott Antman, AHA president, said in the statement. "Every life that has been lost to tobacco addiction" could have been saved, he noted.
To that end, the AHA also called for strong regulations regarding the potential marketability of e-cigarettes to youngsters. The group recommended a federal ban on the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, warning that the devices could become a gateway to actual cigarettes for young people who see e-cigarettes as "high-tech, accessible, and convenient," according to a JAMA Pediatrics study of 40,000 middle and high school students. The AHA also recommended that all existing rules and regulations in place for tobacco-related products should apply to e-cigarettes.
"We must protect future generations from any potential smokescreens in the tobacco product landscape that will cause us to lose precious ground in the fight to make our nation 100% tobacco-free," Dr. Antman said.
According to the AHA, 20 million Americans have lost their lives to tobacco over the last 50 years.