Smoking down but vaping up among US’ youngsters

While the incidence of cigarette smoking among young people of middle- and high-school age has fallen in the US, the use of electronic cigarettes has more than doubled in three years, according to the results of a federal survey relayed by HealthDay.

The 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey found that 25 percent of high school students had used a tobacco product [taken to include electronic cigarettes] during the month prior to the survey’s being undertaken. The survey found also that one in 13 young people of middle-school age had admitted to using a ‘tobacco product’ during the month.

Between 2011 and 2014, the proportion of young people smoking cigarettes fell from 16 percent to nine percent. During the same time hookah use among high school students doubled.

Of the 4.6 million young people who admitted using ‘tobacco’, 2.4 million used electronic cigarettes.

This was said to be the first time that electronic cigarette use had been found to have exceeded the use of every other ‘tobacco product’.

Two point two million young people said they had used more than one tobacco product during the past month.

‘One thing the study confirms for us is that the tobacco product landscape has changed dramatically,’ Benjamin Apelberg, branch chief of epidemiology at FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a press note.

‘Middle- and high-school kids are using novel products like e-cigarettes and hookahs in unprecedented numbers, and many are using more than one kind of tobacco product.’