Davis, Danielle R and Morean, Meghan E and Bold, Krysten W and Camenga, Deepa and Kong, Grace and Jackson, Asti and Simon, Patricia and Krishnan-Sarin, Suchitra (2021) Cooling e-cigarette flavors and the association with e-cigarette use among a sample of high school students. PLoS ONE, 16, (9), e0256844. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256844.
External website: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.13...
INTRODUCTION: E-liquid flavor is typically presented by flavor category (e.g. menthol, mint, fruit, dessert). Cooling sensations produced by flavor additives such as menthol enhance appeal of e-cigarettes among youth, but not all e-liquids that produce cooling sensations are labeled as menthol. Sensory experiences produced by flavors may allow for a new way to capture e-cigarette flavor use. This study aims to examine use of flavors that produce cooling sensations among youth and its association with e-cigarette use behaviors.
METHODS: A 2019 survey of high school students (n = 4875) examined use of e-cigarette flavors that produced cooling sensations (cooling flavors) among past 30-day e-cigarette users. E-cigarette use behaviors (flavor use, nicotine use, frequency of use) were examined between those who did and did not use cooling flavors. A binary logistic regression was used to examine associations between vaping frequency, nicotine (vs. non-nicotine) use, and vaping cooling flavors while controlling for demographics, number of flavors vaped in the past month, and vaping age of onset.
RESULTS: 51.6% (n = 473/916) of the analytic sample endorsed vaping cooling flavors. There were no demographic differences by vaping cooling flavors. Vaping cooling flavors was associated with vaping more frequently (AOR:1.04,95% CI:1.03,1.05) and vaping nicotine (AOR:2.37,95% CI:1.53,3.67).
CONCLUSION: Vaping cooling flavors was associated with greater nicotine vaping and frequency of e-cigarette use. Assessing sensory experience, such as cooling, in addition to flavor category may more fully capture e-cigarette flavor use and its impacts on youth e-cigarette use behaviors.
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Risk and protective factors > Risk factors
T Demographic characteristics > Adolescent / youth (teenager / young person)
VA Geographic area > United States
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