Lee St. John talks about using and selling electronic cigarettes at Hydra Stixs in College Mall. Staff photo by David Snodgress
Quinton Bailey is tight-lipped about the day he smoked his first cigarette.
But his nicotine addiction began well before the age of 16, he says.
By his early teens, Bailey was addicted to nicotine. Shortly after turning 18 years old, Bailey bought an electronic cigarette from the Hydra Stix kiosk in the College Mall, in hopes of ending his addiction.
In the first six months that Bailey used his e-cig, he decreased his nicotine intake from 3.6 to 2.4 mg.
“From how long I’ve done it, I’ve noticed that I can actually breathe a lot easier,” Bailey said, adding that he hopes to eventually knock his nicotine level down to zero. “Anyone who has an e-cig wants to quit.”
E-cigs are helping people such as Bailey quit smoking, but they also are raising alarms among some in the scientific and medical communities. The reason: rapidly increasing popularity of the product with teens.
The percentage of middle and high school students who said they had tried e-cigarettes doubled from 2011 to 2012, according to the National Tobacco Survey. As of 2012, more than 1.78 million teens said they used them. The increased use of e-cigs counters the news in the CDC’s 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance of high school students that cigarette smoking in that age group has fallen to 15.7 percent, the lowest level ever recorded.
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