One-fifth of teenagers who have smoked e-cigarettes admitted to also using the device for smoking pot, according to recent survey, which included responses from 3,800 students from five high schools in Connecticut.
Less than a decade ago, e-cigarettes were an obscure product marketed by a single company in China. Today, electronic cannabis delivery devices have turned into a trend among teenagers in the U.S.
Experimenting with vaporizers
As electronic cigarette use is increasing rapidly among high school students, researchers started to wonder if younger generations were inventive enough to use the devices to vaporize cannabis instead of e-juice.
“To better understand how students were using e-cigarettes or other portable vaporizing devices to vaporize cannabis, we asked students, ‘Which of the following have you used to smoke marijuana?'” scientists wrote in their new paper on the subject, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Vaping weed
Researchers found that of the teenagers who admitted to being so-called dual users – having smoked both e-cigs and marijuana – 29 percent said they had vaped dried pot leaves, while 23 percent had used e-cigarettes to vaporize hash oil, and 15 percent to vape THC-infused wax.
Unlike a spliff, which involves actual smoke and combustion, a vaporizer turns substances into aerosols that can be inhaled by the user. Little is known about the health effects of vaping pot versus smoking it.
Researchers believe teens may be using e-cigarettes to consume weed for the added potency, or because it’s harder to detect than smoking.
“When you vape cannabis, the smell is way less pungent and strong than it is when you smoke pot,” study co-author Meghan Rabbitt Morean, an assistant professor at Oberlin College said. “Everybody kind of knows that characteristic pot odor.”
The rise of the e-Joint
Businesses promoting liquid THC claim it contains “all of the healing benefits of cannabis without the psychoactive effects”. They argue it is the easiest way to consume cannabis for the novice user as it is difficult to smell and easier to transport than traditional marijuana.
“It’s possible that teenagers are using pot in a much less detectable way,” Morean says.
Researchers now know it’s happening, but more questions remain about who is consuming pot this way and the extent to which it is damaging. The next step is to collect similar evidence from other states across the U.S. to see if vaping cannabis is just a passing fad or a permanent trend.
What do you think of teenagers vaping cannabis? Share your views in the comments section below.
