Quit Smoking: E-cigarettes are hyped as an aid to help people to quit smoking regular cigarettes. But studies from UC San Francisco and Korean researchers suggests that young people who are using e-cigarettes to quit smoking might be smoking more, not less.

E-cigarettes look like cigarettes. They are run on batteries and deliver an aerosol of nicotine and othe chemicals. The ads say E-Cigarettes offer safer alternatives to people trying to quit smoking like nicotine gum.  E-cigarettes are getting more popular in the United States and globally. E-Cigarettes are largely unregulated. There is no effective way to control how they are marketed to minors.

Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., of UCSF professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF, who is the senior author of the study said "We are witnessing the beginning of a new phase of the nicotine epidemic and a new route to nicotine addiction for kids. Our paper raises serious concern about the effects of the Wild West marketing of e-cigarettes on youth." UCSF researchers found that four out of five Korean teen e-cigarette users are "dual" smokers.

The UCSF researchers studied the use of e-cigarettes by 75,000 young people in Korea. E-cigarettes are marketed in Korea similarly to how they are marketed in the United States. The study was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The e-cigarette industry says that it is only marketed to adults, but the devices are making headway in the youth market. The U.S. CDC found that most adolescent e-cigarette users also smoke regular cigarettes. The CDC found that the percentage of middle and high school students who use e-cigarettes more than doubled from 2011 to 2012. The CDC says about 1.78 million U.S. students have used e-cigarettes as of 2012.

Researchers believe young e-cigarette smokers "are more likely to have tried quitting smoking, which suggests that, consistent with cigarette marketing messages, some youth may be using e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid...Use of e-cigarettes is associated with heavier use of conventional cigarettes, which raises the likelihood that actual use of e-cigarettes may increase harm by creating a new pathway for youth to become addicted to nicotine and by reducing the odds that an adolescent will stop smoking conventional cigarettes."

The researchers used data from the annual Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control in 2011.

Sungkyu Lee, PhD, lead author of the study, said e-cigarette use is on the rise in Korea. In 2008, when e-cigarettes were unviled, less than one percent of youths tried it. By 2011 that number grew to nine percent in 2011.