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Socio‐economic distribution of e‐cigarette use among recent former regular smokers and current smokers at ages 25–26 in England
Author(s) -
Gagné Thierry,
Brown Jamie
Publication year - 2021
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.15345
Subject(s) - demography , medicine , confidence interval , unemployment , multinomial logistic regression , socioeconomic status , educational attainment , logistic regression , cigarette smoking , environmental health , population , machine learning , sociology , computer science , economics , economic growth
Background and aims E‐cigarettes may potentially help young adult smokers to quit smoking, yet little is known about differences among socio‐economic groups. We examined associations between key socio‐economic characteristics and e‐cigarette use among recent former smokers and current smokers in a sample of young adults in England. Design, setting, participants and measurements We used data on 346 recent former regular (daily for 12+ months) smokers and 1913 current smokers from the ages 25–26 wave of the Next Steps cohort study (2015–2016). In multinomial logistic regression, we estimated relative risk ratios (RRR) of e‐cigarette use (never, former, non‐daily, daily) by educational attainment, social class [using the National Statistics Socio‐economic classification (NS‐SEC)] and employment status [full‐time, part‐time, unemployed and other ‘inactivity’ (e.g. stay‐at‐home parents and permanantly disabled)], adjusting for sex. Findings Among recent former regular smokers, there were no patterns of association between socio‐economic characteristics and e‐cigarette use. Among current smokers: (1) compared with higher occupation (NS‐SEC I/II), intermediate occupation (NS‐SEC III/IV) was positively associated with non‐daily e‐cigarette use [RRR = 1.77, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.03–3.03]; (2) compared with full‐time employment, unemployment was negatively associated with non‐daily and daily e‐cigarette use (RRR = 0.38, 95% CI = 0.18–0.81; RRR = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.02–0.56) and other economic inactivity was negatively associated with daily e‐cigarette use (RRR = 0.39, 95% CI = 0.16–0.93). Conclusions Among young adult smokers in England, lower‐status occupational groups were more likely to use e‐cigarettes on a non‐daily basis than to have never used compared with higher status occupational groups. Compared with people in full‐time employment, those without employment were less likely to use e‐cigarettes daily than to have never used.