Surging numbers of children using e-cigarettes: WHO

Pedestrians pass a vape shop in London, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

E-cigarettes are fuelling an “alarming” new wave of nicotine addiction, with millions of children now hooked on vaping, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

In countries that have the data, children are on average nine times more likely than adults to vape, the WHO said.

The UN health agency said the industry was promoting vapes as supposedly less harmful products than cigarettes -- but in fact was aggressively targeting young people and getting children addicted.

More than 100 million people are vaping, according to the WHO’s first global estimate of e-cigarette use.

“The numbers are alarming,” the agency said.

They include at least 86 million adults, mostly in high-income countries, and at least 15 million children aged 13 to 15.

“E-cigarettes are fuelling a new wave of nicotine addiction,” Etienne Krug, the WHO’s director of health determinants, promotion and prevention, said in a statement.

“They are marketed as harm reduction but, in reality, are hooking kids on nicotine earlier and risk undermining decades of progress.”

Globally, people are smoking less, with the number of tobacco users dropping from 1.38 billion in 2000 to 1.2 billion in 2024, while the world’s population has swelled.

However, one in five adults worldwide are still addicted to tobacco -- and the industry is changing tactics to try to keep the numbers up, the WHO said.

“Millions of people are stopping, or not taking up, tobacco use thanks to tobacco control efforts by countries around the world,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the statement.

In response, “the tobacco industry is fighting back with new nicotine products, aggressively targeting young people”, Tedros added.

“Governments must act faster and stronger in implementing proven tobacco control policies.”

Twelve countries are now seeing tobacco use prevalence on the rise, the WHO said.

“These reversals are not just numbers -- they represent millions more people at risk of disease, disability and premature death in the years to come,” Jeremy Farrar, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health promotion, disease prevention and care, told reporters.

He said smoking was killing more than seven million people every year, while second-hand smoke killed over one million.

Smoking damages “every single part of the body”, Farrar said, adding that doing it indoors around children was “irresponsible and unacceptable”.