New York conference spotlights opposing views in youth usage debate

The fierce debate on issues of youth usage and the effectiveness of regulation took centre stage at a conference on e-cigarettes held at New York University.

Iowa attorney general Tom Miller told the conference that young people’s use of e-cigs was “overwhelmingly casual, overwhelmingly experimental”.

He suggested that e-cigs were not substantially more used by children than cigarettes or alcohol. And he said only 2% of under-aged e-cig users were becoming “addicted”.

Nonetheless, he was firm in warning that there should be no selling or marketing of e-cigs to kids.

While delegates to the NYU conference were deeply divided in their attitudes to the issue, their discussions highlighted clearly how much the issue of under-age usage currently dominates discussion of vaping in the US.