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Association of quarterly prevalence of e‐cigarette use with ever regular smoking among young adults in England: a time–series analysis between 2007 and 2018
Author(s) -
Beard Emma,
Brown Jamie,
Shahab Lion
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0965-2140
DOI - 10.1111/add.15838
Subject(s) - medicine , demography , confidence interval , population , smoking prevalence , young adult , gerontology , environmental health , sociology
Aims To assess how changes in the prevalence of e‐cigarette use among young adults have been associated with changes in the uptake of smoking in England between 2007 and 2018. Design Time–series analysis of population trends with autoregressive integrated moving average with exogeneous input (ARIMAX models). Setting England. Participants Data were aggregated quarterly on young adults aged 16–24 years ( n = 37 105) taking part in the Smoking Toolkit Study. Measures In the primary analysis, prevalence of e‐cigarette use was used to predict prevalence of ever regular smoking among those aged 16–24. Sensitivity analyses stratified the sample into those aged 16–17 and 18–24. Bayes’ factors and robustness regions were calculated for non‐significant findings [effect size beta coefficient (B) = 3.1]. Findings There was evidence for no association between the prevalence of e‐cigarette use and ever regular smoking among those aged 16–24 [B = –0.015, 95% confidence interval (CI) = –0.046 to 0.016; P = 0.341; Bayes factor (BF) = 0.002]. Evidence for no association was also found in the stratified analysis among those aged 16–17 (B = 0.070, 95% CI –0.014 to 0.155, P = 0.102; BF = 0.015) and 18–24 (B = –0.021, 95% CI –0.053 to 0.011; P = 0.205; BF = 0.003). These findings were able to rule out percentage point increases or decreases in ever regular smoking prevalence greater than 0.31% or less than −0.03% for 16–17‐year‐olds and 0.01 or −0.08% for 18–24‐year‐olds for every 1%‐point increase in e‐cigarette prevalence. Conclusion Prevalence of e‐cigarette use among the youth population in England does not appear to be associated with substantial increases or decreases in the prevalence of smoking uptake. Small associations cannot be ruled out.