Teen Vaping Rates Rise in the United States, Nears Pre-Pandemic Levels

Teen Vaping National Youth Tobacco Survey Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaping

By Joel Brussels , Parent Herald Oct 08, 06:48 pm

Photo: (Photo : Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Thursday, October 6, that teen vaping rates are rising again in the United States, a signal that as children return to school, so has teens' use of e-cigarettes.

Data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) revealed that 14.1 percent of high school students and 3.3 percent of middle school students said they had recently used an e-cigarette or other vape products. The survey, led by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC, was conducted from January through May this year.

The vast majority of the youths who were surveyed, 84.5 percent to be exact, said that they used flavored e-cigarettes. The kids most often use fruity or other sweet flavors.

Teen vaping rates rise in the country as students return to school

Linda Neff, the chief of the epidemiology branch of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, told NBC News that the new numbers show that 2.55 million middle and high school students in the United States are vaping this year.

Neff added that these numbers confirm that the e-cigarette epidemic in the U.S. is far from over, and their work is far from done. She said that what is even more disturbing is the frequency of use of e-cigarettes. She noted that among those who currently use e-cigarettes, more than 1 in 4 teen Americans use them daily.

Frequent use was even greater among American high school students, as 46 percent of older teenagers said they vaped nearly every day.

Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that this is powerful evidence that kids are not just experimenting with e-cigarettes, but they are becoming addicted to the high-nicotine products dominating the market now.

Numbers closely resemble those before the pandemic started

The new vaping numbers more closely resemble those from before the COVID pandemic. Nearly 20 percent of high school students and 5 percent of middle schoolers in the first half of 2020 said they had recently vaped.

The numbers appeared to take a dip last year, but experts cautioned that the downward trend witnessed during the COVID pandemic may have been an underestimate because of how the data was collected, as children were surveyed remotely at home. Data for this particular survey has been collected historically in schools.

This year's data was collected in a hybrid manner, with some teen respondents in class and others at their own homes.

Robin Koval, the president of the nonprofit tobacco control organization Truth Initiative, spoke about the new youth vaping statistics, saying that even if they are not directly comparable, they are not unexpected. He added that they have lots of other data pointing in this direction.