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A 15-year-old smoked an e-cigarette in a town near New York City. About 5 percent of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes in 2015, an increase from 2014, the C.D.C. said. Related Article Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

Scientists know cigarettes kill. In fact, they are the leading cause of preventable death for Americans. Yet more than 40 million Americans still smoke. But what about e-cigarettes? How dangerous are they, and should young people have access to them?

Should e-cigarettes be banned for young people under the age of 18, or even 21?

Sabrina Tavernise reports on how the Food and Drug Administration has issued tighter rules that for the first time will extend federal regulatory authority to e-cigarettes:

The Food and Drug Administration made final sweeping new rules that for the first time extend federal regulatory authority to e-cigarettes, popular nicotine delivery devices that have grown into a multibillion-dollar business with virtually no federal oversight or protections for American consumers.

The 499-page regulatory road map has broad implications for public health, the tobacco industry and the nation’s 40 million smokers. The new regulations would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to Americans under 18 and would require that people buying them show photo identification to prove their age, measures already mandated in a number of states. The rules also impose regulations on cigars.

The regulations, which will take effect in 90 days, establish oversight of what has been a market free-for-all of products, including vials of liquid nicotine of varying quality and unknown provenance. Producing them has taken years. They stem from a major tobacco-control law Congress passed in 2009. They were first proposed in draft form in 2014.

“The process has started, and it has been incredibly difficult,” said Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a health advocacy group. “This gives the F.D.A. the authority right away to prohibit some of the most outrageous marketing claims. It imposes nationwide rules that makes it illegal to sell to kids under 18 with real enforcement authority.”

Ms. Tavernise also recently reported that “e-cigarette use by teenagers in the United States rose last year.”

E-cigarette use continued to rise among young teenagers and preteens in the United States last year, according to new federal data, but cigarette smoking overall did not increase, suggesting that, at least so far, fears that the devices would hook a new generation on traditional cigarettes have not come to pass.

Experts said it was too soon to answer the essential question about e-cigarettes: Will they cause more or fewer people to smoke? But the broad trend in youth cigarette smoking has been down in recent years, and researchers have been taking note of that.

“We do not have any strong evidence that it is encouraging smoking among kids but neither do we have good evidence that it won’t over time,” said Kenneth E. Warner, a professor of public health at the University of Michigan.

The article continues:

Young people are a particularly vulnerable bunch, and many public health experts agree that with so little known about the long-term effects of e-cigarettes, the fact that so many youths have started using them is worrying, even if they do not use them as a bridge to traditional cigarettes. Others argue that even nicotine can be harmful. In all, about three million middle and high school students used e-cigarettes in 2015, the data showed, up from 2.46 million in 2014.

“No form of youth tobacco use is safe,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the C.D.C. in a statement. “Nicotine is an addictive drug and use during adolescence may cause lasting harm to brain development.”