Smoking E-cigarettes Increases Risk of Drug Addiction: Study

Smoking E-cigarettes induces people to smoke cannabis and become addicted to cocaine, finds a study.

The use of smoking cessation devices like electronic-cigarettes and flavored nicotine products can have harmful effects on health. Toxic compounds in nicotine and chemical residues cause nausea, vomiting, asthma and trigger inflammation leading to stroke and heart diseases. A past clinical trial also confirmed that smoking E-cigarettes makes people anti-biotic resistant. A recent research also found that nicotine modifies brain biochemistry driving people to crave for cocaine and illegal drugs.

The experiment used laboratory mice that were exposed to nicotine fumes and later, these mice developed a craving for mind-altering substances. Researchers noted the nicotine fumes caused alterations in brain that were similar to the cocaine addiction most cigarette smokers develop.

"Our findings provided a biological basis for the sequence of drug use observed in people. One drug alters the brain's circuitry in a way that enhances the effects of a subsequent drug,'' said Eric Kandel, study author and neuroscientist at the Columbia University, New York, reports the Telegraph.

"E-cigarettes have the same physiological effects on the brain and may pose the same risk of addiction to other drugs as regular cigarettes, especially in adolescence during a critical period of brain development. We don't yet know whether e-cigarettes will prove to be a gateway to the use of conventional cigarettes and illicit drugs, but that's certainly a possibility," he adds.

These findings indicate the risk of cigarette, tobacco and drug addiction many young Americans and E-cigarette users are exposed to. The study also questions the government's decision of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes fearing it can serve as a gateway drug.

"'The emergence in our society of new recreational pharmaceuticals such as e-cigarettes and legalised marijuana, while justifiable on one level, may have adverse consequences of which we are not fully aware," said Jeffrey Lieberman, professor and chair of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, reports the Telegraph.

More information is available online in the New England Journal of Medicine.