Teen use of e-cigs skyrockets in year
Percentage tripled from 2013 to 2014
The percentage of teens using e-cigarettes tripled from 2013 to 2014, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two million teens, 13.4% of high school students, used e-cigarettes in 2014, up from 4.5% in 2013 and 1.5% in 2011. Among middle schoolers, e-cigarette use rose from 1.1% in 2013 to 3.9% in 2014, representing about 450,000 students, the report says.
About one in four teens use tobacco in some form, from pipes to cigars to smokeless tobacco. Among high school students, 9.4% use a hookah, a tobacco pipe with a long tube that draws smoke through water. High schoolers use e-cigarettes and hookahs more than conventional tobacco cigarettes, the CDC says. Among high school students, 9.2% smoked cigarettes in 2014.
Though e-cigarettes don’t contain tobacco or create smoke, they usually contain addictive nicotine. Nicotine can harm brain development in young people and get them addicted, according to the CDC. About 90% of smokers first tried cigarettes as teens.
Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called the report’s finding “stunning.” He said it is a welcome sign of progress against tobacco, which kills 480,000 Americans a year, although he’s concerned about teens using nicotine in any form.
“It represents a historic drop in cigarette use — the first time in history that we’ve seen cigarette use in high school youth below 10%,” says Myers, who was not involved in the report. “At the same time, the explosive rise in e-cigarette use is a wake-up call.”
Phil Daman, president of the ecigarette industry group the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, agreed that the growing number of teens using ecigarettes is “very concerning.”