Will chocolate e-cigs entice kids? Yale researchers investigate

“They want data and they want it yesterday,” Yale tobacco researcher Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin tells Reuters.

She’s speaking of the US Food and Drug Administration, which announced this spring that it intends to begin regulating e-cigarettes and is now urgently seeking data about the health effects of the electronic nicotine delivery systems.

The FDA is spending $270 million on 48 research projects, ranging from the chemical makeup of the vapor that e-cigarettes produce to whether the rise of “vaping”  brings a reduction in smoking, Reuters reports.

Krishnan-Sarin, a psychiatry professor at the School of Medicine, is leading four projects. Reuters says they include studying “whether menthol and flavors such as chocolate and cherry increase the appeal of e-cigarettes, especially to 16-to-18-year-old smokers or ‘dual users’ who both smoke and vape.”

At the moment, the FDA’s list of questions about e-cigarettes seems to exceed what is actually known. The questions include:

• the potential risks of e-cigarettes when used as intended,
• how much nicotine or other potentially harmful chemicals are being inhaled during use, or
• whether there are any benefits associated with using these products.

“Additionally,” the agency says, “it is not known whether e-cigarettes may lead young people to try other tobacco products, including conventional cigarettes, which are known to cause disease and lead to premature death.”

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The Yale Alumni Magazine is published by Yale Alumni Publications Inc., an alumni-based nonprofit that is not run by Yale University. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration.