Popularity of teen vaping on wane: study

NEW YORK — Teen vaping, which has been skyrocketing, fell dramatically last year in the U.S.

A U.S. government survey released Thursday suggests the number of high school and middle school students using electronic cigarettes fell to 2.2 million last year, from three million the year before.

Health officials have worried about the booming popularity of vaping products among kids and the potential impact on adult smoking rates in the future.

“It certainly is a public-health win,” said Brian King, a smoking and health expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s the first decline the CDC has reported in teen vaping since the agency began tracking it in 2011. The findings echo a University of Michigan survey, which also detected a decline in 2016.

It’s unclear why teen vaping fell last year, and it’s too soon to know if the number will continue to drop. One possibility is a growing push to ban sale of e-cigarettes to minors, including a U.S. regulation that took effect in August. Another might be the influence of ad campaigns by the government and other organizations to discourage kids from smoking, the CDC said.

E-cigarettes might also be losing their novelty among teens, said Matthew Farrelly, a tobaccocontrol researcher at RTI International. Studies suggest many kids who vape use the products less often than kids who smoke cigarettes — a sign that vaping is more social and experimental, some experts said.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that provide users with aerosol puffs that can contain nicotine. Research has found kids like to vape flavourings such as strawberry and bubble gum, though often in nicotine-free versions.

They’re generally considered a less-dangerous alternative to regular cigarettes. But health officials have warned nicotine in e-cigarettes is harmful to developing brains.

The CDC study is based on a questionnaire filled out annually by about 20,000 students in grades six through 12. It focused on kids who said they had used a tobacco product in the 30 days before they answered the survey.

It found an overall decline in use of vaping devices, traditional cigarettes and other tobacco products. Based on the responses, the CDC estimates the number of middle and high school students using tobacco products in the U.S. fell to 3.9 million last year, from 4.7 million the year before.

Adolescent cigarette smoking has been falling for many years, but the decline in e-cigarette and hookah use was more remarkable.

In 2011, 1.5 per cent of high school students said they’d recently vaped. That jumped to 16 per cent in 2015, and it’s become more common than cigarette smoking. But it dropped to about 11 per cent last year, the CDC said. For middle school students, about five per cent said they’d recently vaped in 2015. That fell to about four per cent last year, the study found.