Lots of young people are using e-cigarettes who would probably not have otherwise been exposed to nicotine. Primary-school children in Wales were three times more likely to have used e-cigarettes (5.8 per cent) than tobacco (1.6 per cent). E-cigarette use is now more common than tobacco use until the age of 14, and by the age of 16 about one in ten "never smokers" have tried an e-cigarette.

Experimentation with e-cigarettes also appears to be becoming "normalised" within the youth population. Our surveys found no differences in the proportion of young people reporting e-cigarette use by gender, ethnicity or family affluence measures at secondary school age.

In an ideal scenario, the only people using e-cigarettes would be past smokers who have switched to e-cigarettes and no longer smoke tobacco. However we found that current smoking was as strongly associated with e-cigarette use as past smoking. In short, few young people seem to switch from tobacco to e-cigarettes in a bid to stop smoking.

But there is some good news: the prevalence of regular e-cigarette use among school-aged young people is still very low. Less than 2 per cent of the 11 to 16-year-olds surveyed in Wales reported using an e-cigarette at least once a month. This suggests that e-cigarettes are not likely to contribute directly to nicotine addiction for many, if any, young people at the moment.

In England, recent research involving a survey of more than 16,000 14-17 year-olds also found that many teenagers, even those who have never smoked, were now experimenting with e-cigarettes. One in five of those surveyed in that study had tried e-cigarettes, which led the researchers to dub them the "alcopops of the nicotine world" and suggest that they needed tougher controls.