The number of middle and high school students using e-cigarettes has tripled in a year’s time, and the products are now more popular than conventional cigarettes and other tobacco products, according to data published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey is a self-administered questionnaire given annually in public and private schools to middle and high school students. Around 22,000 students took the nationally representative survey in 2014.
E-cigarettes come in various flavors are designed to mimic cigarettes and transmit nicotine to the user in a vapor. Current e-cigarette use (defined as use on at least one day in the past 30 days) among high school students increased from 4.5 percent in 2013 — approximately 660,000 students — to 13.4 percent in 2014, or roughly 2 million students.
Among middle school students, e-cigarette use went up from 1.1 percent in 2013 – about 120,000 students — to 3.9 percent in 2014, or roughly 450,000 students.
“We want parents to know that nicotine is dangerous for kids at any age, whether it’s an e-cigarette, hookah, cigarette or cigar,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement. “Adolescence is a critical time for brain development. Nicotine exposure at a young age may cause lasting harm to brain development, promote addiction, and lead to sustained tobacco use.”
The findings, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also showed the latest trends in tobacco use among the students:
- For middle school students, hookahs and cigarettes (each used by 2.5 percent of those surveyed) were behind e-cigarettes in popularity, followed by cigars (1.9 percent), smokeless tobacco (1.6 percent) and pipes (0.6 percent).
- Among high school students: hookahs (9.4 percent), cigarettes (9.2 percent), cigars (8.2 percent), smokeless tobacco (5.5 percent), snus, a type of smokeless tobacco product similar to dip or chew (1.9 percent) and pipes (1.5 percent).
- The overall rate of tobacco use has not changed. Just under 8 percent of middle school students and just under 25 percent of high school students reported using some form of tobacco products.
- Nearly half of all middle and high school students who were current tobacco users used two or more types of tobacco products.
- Black high school students used cigars most often, while students of other races used e-cigarettes the most.
The sale of electronic cigarettes to anyone under age 18 is against the law in Ohio. E-cigarettes aren’t taxed the same as tobacco cigarettes.
Click here to read more of this story.
About Marion Online News
