• Geoffrey T Fong, Tara Elton-Marshall, Pete Driezen, Annette R Kaufman, K Michael Cummings, Kelvin Choi, Jonathan Kwan, Amber Koblitz, Andrew Hyland, Maansi Bansal-Travers, Charles Carusi, and Mary E Thompson.
• Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada; School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada; Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, ON, Canada.
• Addict Behav. 2019 Apr 1; 91: 180-187.

IntroductionThis study is the first nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (18+) to examine perceptions of the relative harms of eight non-cigarette tobacco products.MethodsData are from Wave 1 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study Adult Questionnaire, a nationally representative study of 32,320 adults in the United States conducted from September 2013 to December 2014.Results40.7% of adults believed that electronic cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes, and 17.8% of adults believed that hookah was less harmful than cigarettes. Those less knowledgeable about the health risks of smoking were more likely to believe that the non-cigarette products were less harmful than cigarettes. Current non-cigarette tobacco product users were more likely to perceive that product to be less harmful than cigarettes (except filtered cigars). There was a significant positive correlation between beliefs that cigarettes were harmful and the likelihood of using hookah; perceptions of the harmfulness of cigarettes was not associated with the likelihood of using any other product.ConclusionsPerceptions of harmfulness varied widely across non-cigarette tobacco products. E-cigarettes and hookah in particular are seen as less harmful compared to cigarettes.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

27 keywords...

hide…