14 DAY TRIAL // Many of the teenagers who use e-cigarettes likely rely on the devices not just for the occasional huff and puff but also to get high, researchers warn in a study published in the science journal Pediatrics this Monday.
Thus, a recent survey focusing on e-cigarette users in high schools in Connecticut revealed that 18% of the teenagers who used such devices had turned to them to inhale THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, at least once.
The research team behind this survey feels confident to go the extra mile and, by extrapolating, argue that nearly 1 in 5 of teenage e-cigarette users probably turn to the devices to get high on cannabis.
The survey, involving participants at 5 high schools and carried out in the spring of 2014, also revealed that it's boys and younger students who are more likely to use e-cigarettes to vaporize marijuana.
So, how are they doing it?
Unlike regular cigarettes, electronic ones work by vaporizing rather than burning substances. By the looks of it, e-cigarette users who turn to such devices to get high have found a way to modify them so that they can put cannabis oil, wax or simply dried pot in them.
The heat produced by the battery-powered devices then burns the drug and THC is released, which the teenagers inhale. The result is that they get high, Medical Express explains.
“Police and parents report difficulty in detecting vaporized cannabis use because it is easily concealed by the absence of the pungent and characteristic odor of smoked cannabis,” cautions specialist Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin with the Yale University School of Medicine.
The trouble with using e-cigarettes to inhale THC is that, at least for now, very little is known about the health risks associated with other compounds that are released during the process. Then, it could be that vaporizing releases more THC than regular smoking does.
Researcher Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin and colleagues say these findings just go to show that e-cigarette sales need to be regulated more strictly. More so since, between 2013 to 2014, the use of such devices among high schoolers is known to have upped from 4.5% to over 13%.