Teen smoking stops declining; vaping blamed

NEW YORK — Cigarette smoking rates have stopped falling among U.S. youngsters, and health officials suspect youth vaping is responsible.

For decades, the percentage of high school and middle school students smoking cigarettes had been falling fairly steadily. For the past three years, it has flattened, according to new numbers released Monday.

There might be several reasons, but a recent boom in vaping is the most likely explanation, said Brian King of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We were making progress, and now you have the introduction of a product that is heavily popular among youth that has completely erased that progress,” King said.

The CDC findings come from a national survey conducted last spring of more than 20,000 middle and high school students. It asked if they had used any tobacco products in the previous month. Some of the findings had been released before, including the boom in vaping.

Experts attribute the vaping increase to the popularity of newer versions of e-cigarettes. The products resemble computer flash drives, can be recharged in USB ports and can be used discreetly.

According to the new CDC data, about 8 percent of high schoolers said they had recently smoked cigarettes in 2018, and about 2 percent of middle schoolers did. Those findings were about the same seen in similar surveys in 2016 and 2017.

It also found about two in five high school students who used a vaping or tobacco product used more than one kind and that the most common combination was e-cigarettes and cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are generally considered better than cigarettes for adults who are already addicted to nicotine. But health officials have worried for years that electronic cigarettes could lead kids to switch to smoking traditional cigarettes.