Brendan Wang, co-founder and CEO of CAPNOS, said he struggled with his e-cigarette addiction for five years, starting in the first year of high school. "It's just something I've just done without really thinking about it too much," he said. "I really had no intention of stopping, but when I realized it, I thought, 'Can I stop? '"
Eventually, Wang decided to understand his habit cycle and came up with the idea of CAPNOS Zero, a smoke-free and nicotine-free pressurized air inhaler, by reading behavioral psychology books. The device is designed to act as a behavioral aid by inhaling flavored air.
According to the results, after surveying thousands of e-cigarette users, Wang found that most e-cigarette users (like smokers) suffer from behavioral addiction or vaping behavior, rather than actual addiction to nicotine. "We use e-cigarettes a lot and develop nicotine tolerance, so we don't get satisfaction easily anymore," Wang said. "At that point, it's morphed into an oral fixation or behavioral addiction where the addiction is just wanting to smoke something."
New York Times data
On the other hand, researchers at the University of Alabama At Birmingham analyzed cross-sectional data from the CDC's National Youth Tobacco Survey from 1999 to 2020 and found that teen smoking rates have been decreasing while e-cigarette use has been increasing.
The team found that while e-cigarette use has increased dramatically since 2014 and is the most commonly used nicotine or tobacco product among middle school students, this has led to a sharp decline in the use of more harmful combustible tobacco products.
They also found that any CDC tobacco product test, which asks if someone has used any tobacco products in the past 30 days, fails to distinguish between the risks of nicotine products. "Most cigarette brands contain similar ingredients, concentrations and chemicals," said study researcher Ruoyan Sun, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Health Care Organization and Policy at UAB School of Public Health.
"On the contrary, there is a wide variety of e-cigarette products with different chemical levels and ingredients. In order to more accurately track patterns of nicotine and tobacco use and their associated risks, surveys need to consider product use frequency and product-specific risks."