More than 1.6 million U.S. middle and high school students reported vaping in 2023, and nearly 90 percent used flavored vapes. But America’s youth vaping epidemic may be no accident.
2023年，超过160万美国中学生和高中生报告使用电子烟，其中近90%的人使用调味电子烟。但美国年轻人吸电子烟的流行可能并非偶然。
UC San Francisco Professor of Medicine Pamela Ling, M.D., MPH, is the Director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. The center studies tobacco, including industry marketing to understand how its tactics shape people’s health. Big tobacco owns many of the top vape manufacturers.
加州大学旧金山分校医学教授Pamela Ling，医学博士，公共卫生硕士，加州大学旧金山分校烟草控制研究和教育中心主任。该中心研究烟草，包括行业营销，以了解其策略如何影响人们的健康。大型烟草公司拥有许多顶级电子烟制造商。
Ling explains why vapes are more addictive than ever before — and why regulating them is so tough.
Ling解释了为什么电子烟比以往任何时候都更容易上瘾，以及为什么监管电子烟如此困难
Q: How potent are vapes?
问：电子烟的效力有多大？
A: Almost a decade ago, the average vape cartridge had the nicotine content of about a pack of cigarettes or 20 cigarettes. These days, popular vapes can easily have the nicotine content of three cartons or 600 cigarettes.
答：大约十年前，普通电子烟的尼古丁含量约为一包香烟或20支香烟的含量。如今，流行的电子烟的尼古丁含量很容易达到三盒或600支香烟的含量。
To make it possible to inhale such strong concentrations of nicotine, vape maker Juul Labs added acids to its vapes in 2015 to make “nicotine salts.” The salts reduce adverse reactions like throat burning and coughing. Today, the most popular disposable vapes use that technology, so vapes are stronger than ever.
为了能够吸入如此高浓度的尼古丁，电子烟制造商Juul Labs在2015年向电子烟中添加了酸，制成“尼古丁盐”。这些盐可以减少喉咙灼热和咳嗽等不良反应。如今，最流行的一次性电子烟使用了这种技术，所以电子烟比以往任何时候都更坚固。
Q: Is vaping safer than smoking cigarettes?
问：电子烟比吸烟更安全吗？
A: We don’t know for sure. I think we can feel pretty confident that vaping exposes you to fewer chemicals and toxins than smoking cigarettes.
答：我们不确定。我认为我们可以非常自信地说，电子烟比吸烟让你接触到更少的化学物质和毒素。
Observational studies have found that for lung disease, the risk associated with vaping does seem to be reduced when compared to cigarettes. But for cardiovascular disease the risks were no different than smoking.
观察性研究发现，对于肺部疾病来说，与香烟相比，与电子烟相关的风险似乎确实降低了。但对于心血管疾病来说，吸烟的风险与吸烟没有什么不同。
And we don’t have definitive data on whether vaping causes less lung cancer than cigarettes. We hope that it does, but it takes 10 to 20 years for someone to develop lung cancer, so it’s too soon to have this kind of data.
我们也没有确切的数据表明电子烟是否比香烟更少导致肺癌。我们希望它能起作用，但一个人患上肺癌需要10到20年的时间，所以现在得到这样的数据还为时过早。
Q: Why are so many people worried about vaping in kids and young adults?
问：为什么这么多人担心孩子和年轻人吸电子烟？
A: In the U.S., rates of vaping are higher among youth than older adults. We’re concerned about adolescents or kids vaping in part because we know vapes deliver nicotine exceptionally efficiently. The earlier you are exposed to nicotine, the more likely you are to become addicted — and that’s true of all substances because your brain is still developing up until 25 years old.
答：在美国，年轻人吸电子烟的比例高于老年人。我们担心青少年或儿童吸电子烟，部分原因是我们知道电子烟能非常有效地释放尼古丁。你越早接触尼古丁，你就越有可能上瘾——所有物质都是如此，因为你的大脑在25岁之前仍在发育。
Q: How does vaping affect young people’s health?
问：电子烟如何影响年轻人的健康？
A: Teens who vape are 3 to 5 times more likely to start smoking cigarettes than their peers. They also have higher rates of asthma-like respiratory symptoms and report more mental health challenges.
答：吸电子烟的青少年开始吸烟的可能性是同龄人的3到5倍。他们也有更高的哮喘样呼吸道症状，并报告更多的心理健康挑战。
Q: You study how marketing shapes vaping in America. What makes vapes so attractive to kids and young adults?
问：你研究的是市场营销如何影响美国的电子烟。是什么让电子烟对孩子和年轻人如此有吸引力？
A: For decades, cigarette ads were designed to appeal to targeted audiences like women, people of color and young people. Cigarette companies would sponsor concerts and sporting events so that young people would associate smoking with social life. Today, thanks to regulation, cigarette brands can’t sponsor those types of events. But because vapes are not cigarettes, they’ve been able to do sponsorships, giveaways and other kinds of really appealing advertising that’s no longer allowed for cigarettes.
答：几十年来，香烟广告的设计都是为了吸引女性、有色人种和年轻人等目标受众。烟草公司会赞助音乐会和体育赛事，这样年轻人就会把吸烟和社交生活联系起来。如今，由于监管规定，香烟品牌不能赞助这类活动。但因为电子烟不是香烟，他们可以做赞助、赠品和其他非常吸引人的广告，而这些广告在香烟上是不被允许的。
And vapes, for a long time, have been marketed like pieces of technology to escape the negative connotations young people have towards traditional cigarettes.
长期以来，电子烟一直作为一种科技产品进行营销，以逃避年轻人对传统香烟的负面影响。
Lastly, a lot of vapes are advertised on social media, where it’s very hard to regulate. Juul is a great example: That company deliberately sought out social media influencers to talk about their products and use them; the company gave away thousands of free Juuls at parties — they manufactured a trend.
最后，很多电子烟都在社交媒体上做广告，很难监管。Juul就是一个很好的例子：该公司故意寻找社交媒体上有影响力的人来谈论他们的产品并使用它们；公司在派对上免费赠送了数千个juul——他们制造了一种潮流。
Q: Why are flavored vapes bad?
问：为什么调味电子烟不好？
A: Vapes come in thousands of flavors, and some are really appealing, like bubble gum, crème brûlée, and chicken and waffles. Even if teens aren’t interested in nicotine, just curiosity about the flavors can be enough to entice them. Because vapes deliver nicotine efficiently, it doesn’t take long to get addicted.
答：电子烟有成千上万种口味，有些很吸引人，比如泡泡糖、奶油<s:1> <s:1> <s:1> <s:1>交换体脂和鸡肉华夫饼。即使青少年对尼古丁不感兴趣，仅仅对其味道的好奇就足以吸引他们。因为电子烟能有效地释放尼古丁，所以很快就会上瘾。
Q: How has the FDA tried to reduce kids’ access to vapes?
问：FDA是如何试图减少儿童接触电子烟的？
A: Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court is grappling with the latest in a string of court cases brought by vape and e-cigarette makers to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ability to regulate the products.
答：目前，美国最高法院正在处理由电子烟和电子烟制造商提起的一系列法庭案件中的最新一起，这些案件挑战了美国食品和药物管理局（FDA）监管这些产品的能力。
When the FDA started regulating tobacco in 2009, it had no authority over electronic cigarettes. It took until 2016 for the FDA to gain the authority to regulate the sale, advertising and distribution of e-cigarettes.
当FDA在2009年开始监管烟草时，它对电子烟没有权力。直到2016年，FDA才获得了监管电子烟销售、广告和分销的权力。
Technically, the FDA must approve all vapes before they can be marketed. But the FDA has only approved 34 vape products out of the hundreds publicly available.
从技术上讲，所有电子烟都必须经过FDA的批准才能上市。但FDA只批准了数百种电子烟产品中的34种。
The FDA sends warning letters to companies doing particularly bad things, like those selling vapes that looked like toys, video games and highlighter markers. But it’s challenging because there are so many kinds of vapes. Companies exploit loopholes in regulations, and regulations haven’t kept up.
美国食品和药物管理局向那些做得特别糟糕的公司发出警告信，比如那些销售看起来像玩具、视频游戏和荧光笔的电子烟的公司。但这很有挑战性，因为电子烟的种类太多了。公司利用法规的漏洞，而法规却没有跟上。
Q: UCSF is home to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, the world’s largest archive of previously secret Big Tobacco papers. How are researchers using these to uncover new insights into tobacco industry tactics?
问：加州大学旧金山分校是烟草行业真相文件的所在地，这是世界上最大的烟草巨头秘密文件档案。研究人员是如何利用这些发现来揭示烟草业策略的新见解的？
A: Right now, the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education is one of the first research bodies to begin digging into the recently acquired Juul documents. We’re looking at those papers and other companies’ collections housed in the archive to uncover how companies’ tactics exacerbate health inequalities using targeted marketing or attempts to influence community leaders.
答：现在，烟草控制研究和教育中心是最早开始深入研究最近获得的Juul文件的研究机构之一。我们正在查看档案馆里的这些论文和其他公司的藏品，以揭示公司是如何利用有针对性的营销或试图影响社区领袖的手段加剧健康不平等的。
We’re also examining papers to see how the industry influenced scientific research and policies and how that impacted communities that are already disproportionately affected by tobacco’s health impacts.
我们还在审查论文，以了解该行业如何影响科学研究和政策，以及这如何影响已经受到烟草健康影响不成比例影响的社区。
