Daily heavy and binge vaping is associated with higher alcohol and cannabis co-use

Abstract

The associations between vaping in young people and alcohol and cannabis co-use remain understudied. The current study examined the effect of vaping frequency on past 30-day alcohol and cannabis use. Using an online survey, regular vapers (N = 1328, aged 16–24) from Canada responded to a demographic and vaping questionnaire and provided information regarding e-cigarette use and alcohol and cannabis co-use. A k-means cluster analysis was used to segment users based on vaping frequency, and a one-way MANOVA tested vaper cluster membership effects on past 30-day alcohol and cannabis use. Pairwise comparisons measured specific mean differences, and crosstabulation with Bonferroni tests examined demographic differences among clusters. Vaper cluster membership had a significant effect on past 30-day alcohol and cannabis use. Daily heavy and binge vapers had higher rates of past 30-day alcohol and cannabis use. Non-daily light vapers were less likely to share their vape and more likely to have never owned a vape. Non-daily light vapers were less likely to use high nicotine concentrations. High vaping frequency places its users at risk for higher alcohol and cannabis use and high-risk vaping behavior. Nicotine caps, among other policies, may be key in reducing high vaping frequency and its negative consequences.

Keywords:

• E-cigarettes
• alcohol
• cannabis
• youth
• young adults
• vaping frequency

Acknowledgements

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library. The authors of this study would like to thank the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada for providing funding for this project.

Ethics statement

Ethics approval was received from Saint Mary’s University (REB #19-105).

Author contributions

M. Al-Hamdani secured the grant, administered the project, conceptualized the study, and led the paper. M. Al-Hamdani also wrote the majority of the initial draft and conducted the analysis. M. Davidson assisted with the initial draft and revisions for the discussion section. J. McArthur assisted with the literature review and revisions for the introduction section. All authors contributed to the revisions and response to the reviewers.

Disclosure statement

Some of the authors have past affiliations with the Lung Association of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (M. Al-Hamdani and M. Davidson). There may be a perceived conflict of interest due to this affiliation.

Data availability statement

The data underlying this article cannot be shared publicly due an agreement with the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada that permitted data use to fulfill the objectives of the project only.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada to M. Al-Hamdani. Heart & Stroke had no role in the study design, collection, analysis of data, interpretation of data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.