• The Zen Day Spa in northern California was not licensed to have a jacuzzi to start
• Health officials are warning all patrons who got sick to be tested for Legionnaires
• READ MORE:  Family contracts ‘potentially fatal’ bug after using a resort hot tub 

By Cassidy Morrison Senior Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Updated: 13:35 EDT, 8 August 2023

A 39-year-old mother from Texas has become the sixth victim of a fungus linked to botched cosmetic surgeries in Mexico, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Jody Adkins died last week from fungal meningitis — a rare, life-threatening infection that causes swelling of areas around the brain and spinal cord — after traveling to northern Mexico for cut-price ‘mommy makeover’ procedures.

Mrs Adkins, described as a ‘sweetheart’ and ‘beautiful woman’ by friends and family, leaves behind two daughters — Skyler West and Adelyn, and her husband, Joe.

Health officials believe the fungal outbreak may have come from unsterilized equipment or black-market morphine used at two Mexican clinics.

Mrs Adkins is one of six Americans who have died from the infection, including mom-of-four Lauren Robinson, who received a boob job, liposuction and Brazilian butt lift (BBL) and mom-of-one Shyanne Medrano, who underwent liposuction and a BBL. A further death of a Mexican patient has also occurred, according to local news media.

Medical tourism is a booming industry in Mexico, with around 1.2million Americans traveling south for affordable care each year – nearly double the figure a decade ago.

Hundreds of Americans who traveled to clinics in Matamoros this year could be at risk, based on lists of people who attended the clinics Clinica-K3 or Riverside Surgical Center. 

The fungus isolated in the two clinics appears to be Fusarium solani, which was linked to a previous meningitis outbreak in Durango, Mexico, late last year.

According to the CDC, that outbreak, which was also linked to epidural anesthetic procedures, had an almost 50 percent mortality rate with those infections — with 39 deaths among 80 cases.

The new outbreak is thought to be due to contaminated epidural equipment, used in procedures such as a BBL, or dodgy morphine.

Mrs Adkins, from the town of Kountze, east of Houston, died on 21 June at the Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston.

She had traveled to a clinic in Matamoros, a city that borders Texas and was just seven hours away from her home.

The victims of the latest outbreak have paid up to $5,000 for their surgeries, a fraction of the price they would pay in the US.

Health officials have been able to reach roughly half of the 230 people who received surgery at either clinic since the start of the year. The outbreak began on June 1, 2023.

Both clinics were closed in May. But if other confirmed cases are found at other facilities, the number at risk could be much higher.

The CDC is urging everyone who received surgery with an epidural (injection into the spine to numb part of the body) at either clinic this year to go to the nearest emergency room as soon as possible to be evaluated, even if they do not have symptoms.

The epidural is used in procedures such as liposuction, breast augmentation and Brazilian butt lifts, which can be more than $16,000 cheaper than in the US.

Dr Luis Manuel Rivera De Anda performed Ms Robinson and Ms Medrano’s surgeries. 

His Instagram shows a plethora of before and after surgery photos for liposuction, BBLs, and breasts and promotes an offer of full liposuction, a BBL and breast augmentation for 5,000 USD.

If a woman got these surgeries done in the US, it could set them back up to $20,000.

It is unknown whether the women’s infections had anything to do with Dr Rivera De Anda’s actions.

Chris Van Deusen from Texas Department of Health told DailyMail.com that while most of the cases have been women, some have also been men.

He said: ‘If anybody knows of somebody who may have gone to Matamoros to get surgery, let them know that they could be affected by this and to know what to look out for and they can certainly contact either us at the state or their local health department in their area to get more information.’

In its latest update, the CDC said it is investigating 172 people who may have the infection.

There have been six deaths. Five of these are confirmed cases, and one is a probable case. There is now a total of nine confirmed cases, up from six.

The patients being overseen by the CDC reported symptoms including headaches, fever, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, confusion, and sensitivity to light.

Dr Tom Chiller, head of the fungal diseases branch at the CDC, told DailyMail.com that he wouldn’t be surprised if the death count doubles.

He said: ‘I anticipate more are coming unfortunately… it’s so critical to get people in as early as possible and it’s not really too late. 

‘I think so far longest period from time of procedure to symptoms has been up to 50 days.

‘Fungi just have these long indolent periods sometimes and we’re not sure why and so it’s really not too late, we want people to get in and be evaluated.’

Dr Chiller added that the agency does not know the exact source of the fungal meningitis yet, and ‘we may never know it, unfortunately.’

He said the CDC is open to the fact that the infection could have occurred in other clinics. Currently, the source of the infection is thought to be the morphine provided to patients by anesthesiologists.

Dr Chiller said said: ‘From my understanding, there are many anesthesiologists that visit these different clinics, and each anesthesiologist brings in their own medicines and performs their own manner of anesthesia. 

‘[Mexico has] been trying to talk with anesthesiologists because that’s probably where the risk [is]. I mean, that’s where the risk was. Either the medicines [that] were used or the practices used. I think that Mexico has been trying to figure that out… they are trying to make efforts to speak with anesthesiologists, understand their practices, and if there are problems, try to improve those practices.’

The brain infection is not isolated to one particular surgeon, he said. 

Dr Chiller said: ‘I’m not at all concerned about the surgical procedure itself, or the way they perform the surgery, or the liposuction, or the butt lifts. 

‘We haven’t had a single issue with the particular surgery. It’s all in the meninges [membranes that enclose the brain and spinal cord]. It’s all in this space, where the only thing that is going in there is the epidural.’

‘We think, based on what they’re telling us, that there are two different medicines being used. There’s an anesthetic and then there’s the analgesic. The anesthetic is to numb things, the analgesic is [to help with] pain, and that’s the morphine. 

‘The anesthetic being used is widely distributed across Mexico, so we would think we would be seeing other patients with this, if there were lots are contaminated batches, unless it was particularly distributed to Matamoros. But Mexicans are saying that that doesn’t seem to be the case. 

‘If that’s not the case, [it could be] the analgesic. [The Mexicans] are telling us that morphine is scarce and hard to get, so there may be black or gray markets that are producing this stuff in a non-regulated way. People may be thinking they’re getting legitimate morphine and they’re not. That’s still very unclear to us.’

He added: ‘If that’s the case, then it could be contaminated morphine that anesthesiologists are purchasing. They may be sourcing it from a place that has got bad manufacturing, and there are some contaminated batches. That’s one possibility. 

‘The other possibility is the machinery used to do the catheter and the epidural is somehow contaminated at these two clinics. That seems less likely to me because then I think we would be seeing a lot of infections altogether until it was cleaned, but you never know with fungi.

‘Finally, just the procedure of mixing the drugs potentially, in the hands of the anesthesiologist, there could have been challenges there. Honestly… I just don’t know if we’ll ever know.’

According to local Mexican news outlet Expreso.press, the Mexican patient who died suffered intolerance to medication meaning the dose had to be lowered, which caused the infection to fatally activate.

Two other patients are hospitalized at High Specialty Regional Hospital (HRAE) in Victoria, Mexico.

The Tamaulipas health secretary Vicente Joel Hernández Navarro said: ‘We have to keep an eye on them for more than six months, we cannot claim victory yet, and we ask them not to go [very far].’ 

E-cigarettes have been linked to five deaths in Britain, MailOnline can reveal today.

None of the fatalities, which have all occurred since 2010, are proven to have been caused directly by vaping. No ages were mentioned for any of the deaths.

But health chiefs tasked with policing the safety of e-cigs admit there is ‘a suspicion’ the gadgets may have been to blame.

Two were put down to heart disorders, including one cardiac arrest.

Respiratory complications were blamed for the other three deaths, with one caused by inhalation of fat — a known potential consequence of vaping.

Almost 1,000 serious adverse reactions to e-cigs have also been logged by Britain’s health watchdog including blood, nervous system and respiratory disorders, as well as cancer and injuries such as burns.

Leading experts today told MailOnline the figures we uncovered ’emphasise vaping is not safe’ and warned the data may only represent ‘the tip of the iceberg’.

But others insisted the gadgets are ‘substantially less harmful than smoking’.

It comes amid growing fears over Britain’s burgeoning child vaping crisis, with rates having doubled within years.’

Colourful displays of the gadgets, sold for as little as £5, litter high streets across the UK. 

Predatory manufacturers lure kids in with flavours such as bubblegum and cotton candy and some shops even sell the devices next to sweets.

Rishi Sunak has vowed to crackdown on the crisis. 

Other experts have also demanded a total ban on disposable vapes such as Elf bars, popular with teenagers. New Zealand has already announced such a move.

The five fatalities from vaping are logged through the Yellow Card system, set up in the 1960s in the wake of the thalidomide scandal.

Officials use the same database to track the safety of Covid vaccines.

It allows doctors, pharmacists and patients themselves to report adverse reactions believed to be caused by prescription and over-the-counter drugs, implants and alternative medicines.

This can lead to them being reviewed, having warnings added to the label or even being taken off the market.

Since 2016, the scheme, run by The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has also covered e-cigarettes and refill containers.

However, a yellow card report – named after the yellow forms initially used in the 1960s – does not prove the product in question was to blame.

Regarding e-cigs, the MHRA says: ‘It may be difficult to tell the difference between something that has occurred naturally and an adverse reaction.

‘Sometimes reactions can be part of an underlying condition rather than being caused by the e-cigarette.’

It adds: ‘Many factors have to be considered when assessing whether an e-cigarette has caused a reported adverse reaction.’ 

Experts however fear the true toll of vaping adverse reactions could be far higher if swathes of the population are unaware of the yellow card scheme.  

Authorities track the database closely to spot any ‘potential patterns of concern’.

Similar issues surrounding blood clots caused by AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine were found months into the historic immunisation drive.

According to the drug watchdog’s 25-page document of adverse reactions for e-cigs, some 942 reports of reactions have been logged since January 1, 2010. 

Almost half (405) of all reports logged cited respiratory disorders, including 47 with oropharyngeal pain and 57 with shortness of breath. 

Some 120 were for gastrointestinal disorders, while 114 general disorders, including chest pain, fatigue and malaise, were also noted. 

One report of laryngeal cancer, three of atrial fibrillation – a condition that causes an irregular heart rate – and one anaphylactic shock, were also logged by the MHRA. 

An MHRA spokesman told MailOnline: ‘We keep the safety of e-cigarettes under close review and convene working groups when required to review data and evidence surrounding suspected adverse reactions associated with e-cigarette usage.’

They added: ‘If you have purchased a product that is not published on our website, you should return it to the retailer or your local trading standards service.

‘If you experience an adverse effect from use of a nicotine-containing e-cigarette product, please report it to us via our yellow card scheme. 

‘It is important to note that a report of an adverse reaction does not necessarily mean that the e-cigarette has caused the reaction, only that the submitter suspects it may have. 

‘Many factors have to be considered when assessing whether an e-cigarette has caused a reported adverse reaction.’

In 2019, a 57-year-old British factory worker was named as the first e-cig user in the world feared to have developed a fatal disease directly linked to his vaping habit.

Terry Miller, 57, from Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, died in 2010 after developing lipoid pneumonia, with medics confirming oil from vaping fluid was found in his lungs.

After smoking around 20 cigarettes a day for 41 years, he decided to give up and bought an e-cigarette from his local pharmacy, believing it was an healthier option. 

He began vaping every day and would often buy nicotine liquid refills and new e-cigarettes on the internet from a company based in the South of England. 

But around eight months after he switched to vaping in 2010, Terry’s lungs began to fail and he was diagnosed with fibrosis. 

E-cigs allow people to inhale nicotine in a vapour — which is produced by heating a liquid, which typically contains propylene glycol, glycerine, flavourings, and other chemicals.

Unlike traditional cigarettes, they do not contain tobacco, nor do they produce tar or carbon — two of the most dangerous elements.

Vaping has risen rapidly over the past decade to reach record levels in the UK, with an estimated 4.3million people who are regular vapers, according to a report last year. 

The data suggested that 8.3 per cent of adults in England, Wales and Scotland vape, up from 1.7 per cent a decade ago, which equated to about 800,000 people. 

Health chiefs say e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of smoking and believe they can play a key role in weaning the remaining five million smokers in Britain off tobacco and putting an end to the killer habit.

Although widely viewed as safer than smoking, the long-term effects of vaping still remain a mystery.

Doctors fear there could be a wave of lung disease, dental issues and even cancer in the coming decades in people who took up the habit at a young age.

Dr Salim Khan, head of department for public health at Birmingham City University, told MailOnline: ‘The MHRA analysis is welcomed as it provides additional evidence of the potential harm that e-cigarettes and vaping can cause.

‘In addition to more than half of the reports relating to respiratory disorders, there are several non-respiratory health events listed which is consistent with published research findings.

He added: ‘Whilst e-cigarettes and vaping are assumed to be the causal factor, it is important to recognise that there may be other contributing factors which could have resulted in the health events listed.

‘It is also important to note that the volume and pattern of adverse respiratory and other health events associated with e-cigarette use or vaping in the UK may not be fully represented by the data.

‘The data may only represent the tip of the iceberg.

‘To establish the potential impact that e-cigarettes and vaping are having on people’s health, we require continued data collection and reporting. We need rigorous evidence that clearly demonstrates the detrimental impact of e-cigarettes and vaping on health.’

Professor Jamie Brown, director of University College London’s Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, meanwhile told MailOnline: ‘These new data emphasise that vaping is not safe and never smokers should not vape. 

‘However, to put these numbers in context, cigarette smoking causes about 76,000 deaths a year in the UK.

‘So, in the same period, cigarette smoking caused approximately 1million deaths in the UK.’

Equally, Professor John Britton, who sits on the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Group, said the figures show reactions ‘are very rare’.

He told MailOnline: ‘These reports demonstrate adverse events from vaping, and in particular serious adverse events, are very rare. 

‘In contrast, since 2010 tobacco smoking has killed around one million people. 

‘We can thus be confident that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking.’ 

Under its position statement, the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Group acknowledges that while e-cigarettes ‘are probably more hazardous than nicotine replacement therapy, the harm is unlikely to exceed 5 per cent of that from smoking tobacco’. 

Mark Oates, founder of consumer advocacy group We Vape, also told MailOnline it is ‘important to keep the MHRA findings in perspective’ but acknowledged the research into the health impact of the devices.

He said: ‘We welcome detailed and continuous research into the health effects of vaping so the safest possible devices are available to smokers trying to quit.

‘Some 4.3million people now vape in the UK and there have been no confirmed deaths as a result. 

‘In contrast, since 2010, more than a million people have been killed by smoking. It’s therefore important to keep the MHRA findings in perspective.

‘Following the Covid vaccine rollout and booster scheme, for example, there were more than 11,500 reports of side effects from the jab using the Government’s yellow card system, yet we didn’t halt a programme that has invariably saved countless lives.’

He added: ‘Vaping is helping millions of people avoid a preventable and often agonising death, around the world, every year from smoking. 

‘This excellent news should not be overlooked when studying self-reported side effects in a significant minority of vapers.’

Earlier this month however, leading paediatricians also warned children were being hospitalised with vaping-induced breathing difficulties amid a ‘disturbing’ youth vaping epidemic.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) warned that e-cigarettes ‘are not a risk-free product and can be just as addictive, if not more so than traditional cigarettes’.

It called for urgent action to protect youngsters, saying experts agree that longer-term data is needed on the effects of vaping, particularly in regard to cardiovascular disease.

Under an anti-smoking push, last month health minister Neil O’Brien revealed a £3million taskforce would be established to enforce the current rules of selling of vapes.

But one million cigarette addicts will also get e-cigarette ‘starter kits’ as part of a ‘swap to stop’ scheme.

The free kits are set to be offered to almost one in five of all smokers in England at an estimated cost of £45million over two years. 

Health chiefs hope the world-first policy will make England smoke-free.

But Mr O’Brien also acknowledged No10’s ambition to crackdown on the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s as well as the colourful packaging and candy flavours they use to lure kids in.

It is illegal to sell vapes to under-18s but social media carries posts from teenagers showing vapes and discussing flavours such as pink lemonade, strawberry, banana and mango. 

A damning MailOnline expose in April laid bare the true scale of the problem and the marketing tactics of vape retailers trying to target children. 

Tom Padley, now 19, from Putney, London, told MailOnline at the time that he had been using vapes since the age of just 13.

Tom, who picked up the habit in boarding school, said ‘it’s not like cigarettes, where you would have to find a place to go outside and do it — you can just do it non-stop indoors’. 

But six years into vaping, he has begun to suffer health issues.

‘I get ill a lot more. I get ulcers occasionally in my mouth. I have a lot of coughs. I guarantee it’s massively increased due to vaping,’ he told MailOnline.

Last month, the BBC also discovered ‘highlighter vapes’, confiscated from youngsters at a college in Kidderminster, contained dangerous levels of lead, nickel and chromium.

The gadgets, which can cost as little as £5, were over 9.6 times the safe level of nickel and 6.6 times the safe level of chromium.

Exposure to lead can impair brain development, while the other two metals can trigger blood clotting. 

Don’t take that tone! Researchers say the pitch of your voice could be linked to your genetics after finding DNA mutation is associated with people who have higher timbres

• Scientists combined speech recordings from almost 13,000 Icelanders 
• They found that part of the DNA is associated with a higher-pitched voice

By Colin Fernandez

Updated: 21:01 EDT, 9 June 2023

Doctors have reported rising cases of a rare but fatal condition linked to significant marijuana use, which causes intense vomiting, dehydration and abdominal pain.

Daily marijuana smokers are at risk of developing cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), which researchers warn could become more common as marijuana becomes increasingly legal. It can be used recreationally in 22 US states.

Brian Smith, 17, died in Indiana in October 2018 from dehydration due to CHS. 

Smith is one of four known deaths linked to CHS – the others are a 27-year-old female, a 27-year-old male, and a 31-year.

However, there are numerous cases of people with the condition being hospitalized for weeks. 

One woman from Boston, who deemed herself an ‘Olympic smoker’, spent more than two weeks in the hospital. 

ER doctor Sam Torbati said CHS is a ‘relatively unique condition that we see with patients who use relatively large amounts of marijuana – at least 20 times in a month.

‘Patients who suffer from this condition have recurrent bouts of vomiting and abdominal pain.

‘They’re terrifically symptomatic and can get very sick.’

CHS is a rare illness that comes as a result of chronic and prolonged usage of cannabis. Symptoms of CHS include extreme vomiting, nausea, dehydration, stomach pain and death in rare cases.

In the brain, marijuana often helps to prevent nausea and vomiting. However, in the digestive tract, marijuana has the opposite effect and makes nausea and vomiting more likely to occur.

Some doctors believe CHS is due to overstimulation of the endocannabinoid system, a network of receptors in the body that respond to compounds in cannabis.

Dr Torbati said he has seen increasing CHS cases at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

But diagnosing the condition is difficult.

Dr Torbati said: ‘There’s no test that we can do. There’s no blood test. It doesn’t show up on a CAT scan. I can’t really show you an image to say, this is what CHS looks like.

Mr Smith, who died in 2018 from CHS, first went to the hospital with his mother, Regina Denney, to complain about severe vomiting and abdominal pain and, at the time, had lost about 30 pounds in a single month.

His mother, Regina Denney,  told ABC News: ‘The first time I noticed the vomiting was April 7. He was vomiting so much that he said he felt tingling in his face and hands.’

She said: ‘The doctors took Brian ahead of me. I came in, and he had IVs in both arms; he was on oxygen. They said that the muscle contraction was an anxiety attack from the vomiting.

‘They did say he was dehydrated. His kidneys went into failure.’

Mr Smith agreed to give up marijuana for 45 days, but when the symptoms did not stop, he got annoyed and began smoking again.

His death came as a shock to his mother six months after his diagnosis.

‘He said, ‘Mom, I can’t breathe.’ I rolled him over, and my son was gone,’ Ms Denney told RTV6.

Ms Denney said: ‘I had to process that because weed doesn’t kill you. But it did.’

She added: ‘I don’t want another family to go through what we have.‘

A Canadian study found that CHS-related ER visits shot up 13-fold over seven years between 2014 and 2021. 

Commercial sales skyrocketed in Canada, as did the choice of cannabis products on the market.

Dr Torbati said more research is essential.

He said: ‘We became more and more aware of this condition because more and more people are now using marijuana products. They now have far more THC, which believe is the main chemical compound responsible for this.’

In America, cannabis samples seized by the DEA showed that potency tripled from 4 percent THC in 1995 to 12 percent in 2014.

The ratio of THC to CBD also increased from 14 to 80 times greater.

For years, marijuana has been used recreationally and medically to treat chronic pain and nausea, but for some, it causes the opposite, which is why the condition is sometimes misdiagnosed.

Erica Hagler, 38m from Boston, said she used so much marijuana she thought of herself as an ‘Olympic smoker’.

She walked around her house with a bong in hand and would even wake up in the night to have a drag.

Ms Hagler first became sick in August 2018 and told ABC: ‘I ended up in the hospital. I was there for two and a half weeks, constantly vomiting.’

She told Salon: ‘I could not stop vomiting or shaking. I was getting to the point where I couldn’t walk because I was so weak. I lost 30 pounds in three weeks.’ 

She said: ‘They tested me for everything else underneath the sun and they couldn’t find a diagnosis.’

Ms Hagler did her own research and came across CHS. A doctor confirmed her diagnosis and she gave up marijuana instantly.

She said: ‘Once I knew it was killing me, it was immediate. But for most people, it’s not that easy.’

Ms Hagler started a Facebook support group for those recovering from CHS, creating a place to share their symptoms.

Many in the group suffer horrific burns from scalding hot showers, as the water relieves CHS symptoms, at least temporarily.

One poster said: ‘During my last episode I spent hours and hours in the hot steamy shower through the course of about 10 days and I used such hot water and I was in there for so long that I scalded my back and ended up in the ER.’

Doctors believe that when THC and CBD bind with certain receptors in the body over and over, it can set off serious nausea and vomiting.

It’s thought that using high heat might trigger something in the same receptors that helps symptoms.

CHS has no cure, but doctors say patients must give up marijuana.

Dr Torbati said: ‘Patients will say, well I stopped for two weeks and I didn’t get better, so it must not be this condition that you’re labeling me with.

‘And we educate and say, really, you’re gonna need to stop for months.’

Vaping acts like a gateway drug into more dangerous substance abuse, a study has claimed.

Researchers found e-cigarette use among teenagers was ‘strongly tied’ to binge drinking alcohol and marijuana use.

Compared to people who didn’t smoke at all, teen vapers were up to 20 times more likely to also use cannabis.

The scientists, from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said the ‘size of the effect is concerning given the harms these substances pose to adolescents’.

They did not speculate on reasons why, but it may be that vapers were more inclined to try other substances because of peer pressure and a disposition towards risk-taking behavior.

Dr Noah Kreski, a data analyst at Columbia University, said: ‘While the overall health risks of vaping are lower than smoking, electronic cigarettes are still harmful to adolescents and warrant ongoing surveillance — especially as the long-term impacts remain unknown.

‘Our results indicate that vaping is not an isolated behavior, but rather strongly tied to other substance use that can harm adolescents and make quitting nicotine more difficult.

‘Recognizing the strong overlap between various forms of substance use, effective intervention efforts should work to simultaneously address vaping, drinking and cannabis use to encourage the health and well-being of young people.’

In the study, scientists looked at survey results from nearly 52,000 children aged 12 to 18 across the United States. They were quizzed between 2017 and 2019.

They had taken part in a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) backed survey that tracked their drug use over their lives, in the past year and in the past month.

In the survey, youngsters were asked whether they had used nicotine in the past 30 days — through smoking or vaping — and if they had used cannabis in the past 30 days.

They adjusted for demographic factors such as participants’ age, sex, race, parental education, and how urban where they lived was.

The researchers found that adolescents who smoked e-cigarettes or vapes were eight times more likely to use cannabis than peers who didn’t use nicotine products.

However, those who vaped were 20 times more likely to use cannabis than those who used no nicotine products.

Teens who both smoked and vaped, on the other hand, were found to be a shocking 40 times more likely to use cannabis than those who used no nicotine.

When focusing on binge drinking, the researchers similarly found a strong correlation between those who smoked and vaped.

Tellingly, the correlation between smoking and vaping with binge drinking tended to ‘increase in magnitude at greater levels of binge drinking’.

For example, those who both smoked and vaped — compared with those who used no nicotine products — were 5.6 times more likely to have participated in binge drinking on one occasion.

This same group were also 21.6 times more likely to have participated in binge drinking on between three and five occasions and a huge 36.5 times more likely to have participated in binge drinking on ten or more occasions.

Mr Kreski said: ‘The links between vaping-only, or both smoking and vaping and cannabis use and binge drinking outcomes in adolescents are particularly striking – especially at the highest levels of binge drinking.

‘While the causal direction of these associations is unclear, the size of the effect is concerning given the harms these substances pose to adolescents.

‘Given the strong links between nicotine use and both cannabis use and binge drinking, there is a need for sustained interventions, advertising and promotion restrictions, and national public education efforts to reduce vaping in adolescents – efforts that acknowledge co-occurring substance use.’

Despite the success of their study, the team recognize the limitations of the data used — such as the data having been collected from school students during the school day, excluding those absent on the day, and the fact that nicotine vaping and smoking were self-reported, making them vulnerable to measurement and recall bias.

The study was published in the journal Substance Use and Misuse.

Vaping hit the mainstream in the 2010s and was viewed as a safe smoking cessation tool that could finally wean millions of tobacco users off cigarettes.

Not too long ago, a person could vape indoors, even on hospital property in some cases.

The collective acceptance of vaping as, at least on its surface, a safer smoking alternative obscured real health harms conferred by the devices.

Early studies that warned of their harmful effects were dismissed as outliers at first, or slammed as disinformation spread by the tobacco industry suddenly threatened by the arrival of smokeless nicotine products.

But scientific evidence pointing to their deleterious effects has piled up and shows they cause nearly or as much damage as traditional cigarettes.

Early studies that warned of their harmful effects were dismissed as outliers at first, or slammed as disinformation spread by the tobacco industry suddenly threatened by the arrival of smokeless nicotine products.

Meanwhile, new data for Great Britain showed an increase in the number of 11 to 17-year-olds trying vaping ‘once or twice’, from 7.7 percent last year to 11.6 percent this year.

Disposable vapes appeared to be the e-cigarette of choice among youngsters, and most said they purchased them from bodegas.

It is illegal in the UK to sell vapes to under-18s but social media carries posts from teenagers showing vapes and discussing flavors such as pink lemonade, strawberry, banana and mango.

Experts have warned previously how the new generation of disposable vapes known as ‘puff bars’ – which contain nicotine – have flooded the market.