The electronic cigarette is a recent electronic device, often presented to young adolescents as a less harmful alternative to conventional cigarettes or as a substitute for smoking cessation. The aim of our work is to describe and analyze the perception of adolescents and their visions concerning electronic cigarettes.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted from September 2021 to March 2022, carried out in 2 schools using an anonymous questionnaire distributed in classes. The target age group was 13 to 16 years old. 450 questionnaires were collected and 422 were retained. The mean age of adolescents was 14 years with a standard deviation of 0.734 years, male sex represented 49.3% (n=208), smoking was found in 3.1% of cases (95% CI, 1.8-5.2). E-cigarettes were known in the majority of college students in 78% of cases (95% CI, 73.8-81.7) and experimented at least once in 14.45% of cases (95% CI, 11.4-18.1). The circumstances for trying vaping were dominated by the attraction of novelty/curiosity in 48% of participants and by the desire to be part of the smoking group/feel like an adult in 25% of participants. Regarding the perception of the electronic cigarette, the students who had no idea about its harmfulness compared to the classic cigarette represented 39% of the sample while 31% had estimated that the e-cigarette is less harmful. As for smoking cessation with the help of the e-cigarette, more than half (54%) of students had no idea about it because of the lack of information available and 20% felt that vaping is a good way to quit smoking.