Abstract
BackgroundVaping among adolescents and young adults is a significant public health concern worldwide. Understanding which risk factors are associated with vaping is important to help inform evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies. There are several gaps in the current literature examining these associations such as limited longitudinal research. We examined the association between parental smoking/vaping, adolescent sex, mental disorders in adolescence, 13 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and a) any vaping and b) course of vaping across two time points among adolescents and young adults.MethodsData were from Waves 1 and 2 of the longitudinal Well-Being and Experiences Study (The WE Study) in Manitoba, Canada which collected data from a community sample of adolescents (14 to 17 years) and their parent/caregiver in Wave 1 in 2017–18 and the adolescents/young adults only in Wave 2 in 2019. A total of 752 adolescents/young adults (72.4% of the original cohort) completed both waves of the study. Binary and multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to understand the relationship between the 16 risk factors and the two vaping outcomes.ResultsVaping prevalence was 45.5% for any vaping, 2.7% for Wave 1 vaping only, 19.7% for new onset Wave 2 vaping, and 21.2% for vaping at both waves. After adjusting for covariates, the majority of risk factors examined were associated with any adolescent or young adult vaping, including: parental smoking or vaping, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, exposure to verbal intimate partner violence, household substance use, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, parental problems with police, foster care or contact with a child protective organization, an unsafe neighbourhood, and peer victimization. The majority of these risk factors, as well as adolescent mental health and parental gambling, were associated with different courses of vaping across the two time points.ConclusionsThe findings emphasize the need for early vaping prevention and identified several ACEs and other factors that were associated with adolescent and young adult vaping and course of vaping. These identified ACEs and risk factors can help inform programs, strategies, and potential groups to target for vaping interventions.
Highlights
Vaping among adolescents and young adults is a significant public health concern worldwide
Unadjusted and adjusted multinomial logistic regressions were computed to examine the relationship between parental and adolescent risk factors and adolescent and young adult vaping across time (W1 to Wave 2 (W2)) using the four-level categorical variable described above
The following risk factors were significantly associated with increased odds of any vaping: parental smoking or vaping, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, exposure to verbal intimate partner violence (IPV), household substance use, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce
Summary
Vaping among adolescents and young adults is a significant public health concern worldwide. As an example of the harm associated with e-cigarettes, the significant increase in their use was identified as the main driver in increased tobacco use among youth in 2017–2018, based on a United States (US) nationally representative sample of grades 6 to 12 students [5]. This essentially erased the progress made in tobacco reduction from 2011 to 2017; e-cigarettes have become the most commonly used tobacco product among middle and high school students since 2014 [5, 6]. There have been frequent calls to action to protect youth by preventing vaping initiation and helping them discontinue use [2]
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