That teen vaping epidemic

All the data you need to debunk America's teen vaping panic is freely available on government websites. Martin Jarvis and colleagues have been looking at the National Youth Tobacco Survey and the number of high school students who regularly vape without having previously used tobacco is very small indeed.

Past-30-day e-cigarette use increased by 78% from 11.7% in 2017 to 20.8% in 2018. In both years, use was strongly associated with lifetime tobacco use history: it was seen in 8.4% of never tobacco users in 2018, in 29.0% of those who had tried a non-combustible, but never a combustible, product (OR 4.4 (CI 2.8-7.2) by comparison with never tobacco users), and in 71.0 % of those who had smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime (OR 26.8, CI 17.7-40.5)

Frequent use occurred in 0.1% of never tobacco users in 2017 and 1.0% in 2018. Findings from 2014 and 2015 showed that first product tried was overwhelmingly cigarettes among those with a substantial lifetime cigarette history. Among past-30-day e-cigarette users who had never tried tobacco products in 2018, 3.8% reported craving, 3.1% reported wanting to use within 30 minutes of waking, and 61.8% said they had used e-cigarettes on ≤10 days in their life.

They conclude:

We find a gaping chasm between the vision of an epidemic of e-cigarette use threatening to engulf a new generation in nicotine addiction and the reality of the evidence contained in the NYTS.

Meanwhile, cigarette used by this age group has just fallen to the lowest level on record.

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