Use of 'Elf Bar' among youth and young adults who currently vape in England: cross-sectional associations with demographics, dependence indicators and reasons for use

Katherine East; Eve V Taylor; Erikas Simonavičius; Jessica L Reid; Robin Burkhalter; Ann McNeill; David Hammond

doi:10.1111/add.16463

Use of 'Elf Bar' among youth and young adults who currently vape in England: cross-sectional associations with demographics, dependence indicators and reasons for use

Addiction. 2024 Mar 21. doi: 10.1111/add.16463. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Katherine East^{1

2}, Eve V Taylor¹, Erikas Simonavičius¹, Jessica L Reid², Robin Burkhalter², Ann McNeill¹, David Hammond²

Affiliations

¹ National Addiction Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
² School of Public Health Sciences, Faculty of Health, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada.

PMID: 38515247
DOI: 10.1111/add.16463

Abstract

Background and aims: Elf Bar is currently the leading e-cigarette (vape) brand in Great Britain. This study examined youth and young adults' use of Elf Bar, socio-demographic characteristics and dependence indicators and reasons for use over other brands.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Setting and participants: Online 2022 International Tobacco Control Project Youth Tobacco and Vaping Survey (N = 1355 16-29-year-olds in England who had vaped in the past 30 days).

Measurements: Currently using Elf Bar most often (versus other brands) and associations with: socio-demographics, owning a vaping device, dependence indicators and reasons for brand choice. Logistic regressions were used.

Findings: Among 16-29-year-olds who vaped in the past 30 days, 48.4% (n = 732) reported Elf Bar as the brand they used most often. Among 16-17-year-olds, 40.7% used Elf Bar over other brands; this was lower than among 18-19-year-olds (60.1%) and 20-29-year-olds (47.4%) (P ≤ 0.002). Using Elf Bar over other brands was higher among those who were female (55.2 versus 41.5% male), identified as White (53.1 versus 30.9% other/mixed), a student (54.5 versus 44.3% not), did not own a vape (66.7 versus 44.4% who did) and typically vaped 5-8 hours after waking (62.7 versus 36.8% within 5 min) (P ≤ 0.044). Most who vaped but had never smoked used Elf Bar (64.3%), although use did not significantly differ from those who currently (45.4%), formerly (42.3%) or experimentally (48.7%) smoked (all P ≥ 0.060). Popular reasons for choosing Elf Bar over other brands were better flavour/taste (47.5%), less expensive (28.7%), easier to get (26.1%), smoother to inhale (24.0%) and popularity (23.1%). 'Better for quitting smoking' (10.1%) was least frequently selected reason for choosing Elf Bar over other brands.

Conclusions: Elf Bar brand e-cigarettes were used by approximately half of 16-29-year-olds who vaped in England in 2022 and was mainly chosen over other brands for subjective responses (e.g. flavour/taste), rather than for quitting smoking.

Keywords: Disposables; Elf Bar; survey; vaping; young adults; youth.

Abstract

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