Electronic-Cigarette and Heated Tobacco Product Use in the United Arab Emirates, an Emerging EC and HTP Market: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the International Tobacco Control UAE Survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Electronic cigarettes (ECs) and heated tobacco products (HTPs) are recent arrivals to the nicotine product market in the Middle East, which are rapidly growing in popularity in the region. There is a lack of surveillance data at the country-level on use of these products and factors associated with their use. AIMS AND METHODS: This study analyzed a subset of data from the United Arab Emirates Healthy Future Study, a population-based cohort study of the Emirati population, to determine the factors associated with EC and HTP use among a sample of Emirati adults (≥18 years). The baseline assessment and supplementary questionnaires, conducted from 2016 to 2023, included data on combustible tobacco use, EC, and HTP use and sociodemographic characteristics. RESULTS: Of the 2041 individuals who answered questions on EC use, 32% reported ever using them. Of the 521 people who provided data on HTP, 30% reported ever using them. After adjusting for age, sex, education, perceived harms, and perceived addictiveness of EC, current EC use was associated with baseline combustible tobacco smoking (aOR = 27.63, 95% confidence interval [CI] 14.39, 53.06), users of a younger age (aOR = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.88, 0.95), and users of male sex (OR = 2.15, 95% CI = 1.21, 3.81). Current HTP use was less common but was also associated with baseline combustible tobacco use. CONCLUSIONS: The use of ECs and HTPs was more common among those who used combustible tobacco. Future research should examine use trajectories among those who do and do not smoke, as well as the uptake of these products among youth. IMPLICATIONS: Non-combustible nicotine products are growing in popularity in the Middle East Region. Our study found that EC and HTP use is associated with baseline combustible tobacco use and that concurrent users may use them to cut down on their combustible tobacco use. Continued comprehensive population-based monitoring of all-tobacco and nicotine products, especially EC and HTP use, will provide current data to aid in appropriately informing public health and harm reduction messages and programming.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".