E-Cigarettes Use Among Vietnamese Teenagers Worries Health Authorities

On Wednesday, Vietnam News reported that the country has recorded rising cases of poisoning due to the usage of e-cigarettes and heated cigarette products.

The Health Ministry’s Medical Examination and Treatment Department noted a concerning uptake of electronic nicotine delivery and heated tobacco products among young people.

It said this after several students were admitted to the emergency room for nicotine poisoning and other harmful substances found in e-cigarettes and heated cigarettes.

“Using nicotine during adolescence can cause harm to the parts of the brain that control attention, learning ability, and mood,” Nguyen Tuan Lam, an expert from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Vietnam, told Vietnam News. “It can also increase the risks of addiction to other substances in the future.”

E-cigarettes and heated cigarettes also pose potential risks and contribute to social evils, such as drug abuse and other addictive behaviours, which adversely affect the health and lifestyle of adolescents, the health ministry warned.

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This is despite a slight reduction of people who smoked tobacco in 2022, down 0.8 percent from 2015.

Vietnam is ranked third among Southeast Asian countries with the highest smoking prevalence, only after Indonesia and the Philippines, according to the health authorities.

The country is now faced with additional challenges in its fight against smoking as the prevalence of e-cigarettes among Vietnamese teens has increased in recent years among 13 to 15-year-olds.

About 3.5 percent were reported to use e-cigarettes in 2022, up from 2.6 percent in 2019, according to a report by the Ministries of Health and Education.

The authorities also recorded e-cigarette use among adolescents and young adults, with about seven in 100 aged between 15 and 24 years old using e-cigarettes.

The World Health Organisation has recommended that e-cigarettes are more harmful than traditional cigarettes and can cause premature health effects or interstitial lung disease, which progresses rapidly and has a worse prognosis than lung cancer.

The health ministry last November proposed a ban on all new-generation tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.