Vaping and marijuana use more popular among teens than regular cigarettes, according to NIH
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| A Betamorph E-Cigs employee exhaling vapor from an electric cigarette at the company's store in Albuquerque, N.M. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS |
E-cigarette use among teens dropped in 2016, reversing an upward
trend that had prompted the U.S. Surgeon General to recommend increased regulation and taxation.
Among high-school seniors, 12% this year said they had used
e-cigarettes in the past month compared with 16% in 2015, according to the
National Institutes of Health’s annual Monitoring the Future survey.
E-cigarettes and marijuana are both more popular among teens
than regular cigarettes, whose use among teens has been declining for more than
two decades, according to the survey. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices
that heat nicotine-laced liquid into a vapor.
Among high-school seniors, 23% said they had used marijuana in
the past month, and 11% said they had smoked conventional cigarettes. Some 13%
of high-school seniors said they had used tobacco with a hookah in the past
year, down from 23% in 2014, the peak since the survey began measuring hookah
use in 2010.
Nora Volkow, director
of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, said
she was encouraged by the continued long-term decline in teen use of tobacco
and marijuana, and the recent drop in e-cigarette use.
“At the same time, we shouldn’t be complacent,” she said. “One
of the questions that we have is the extent to which exposure to these
electronic cigarettes could make kids more vulnerable for going back into
combustible tobacco.”
Surgeon General Vivek
Murthy last week issued a report
calling e-cigarette use by children and young adults “a major public health
concern.” The report cited rising rates from 2011 to 2015. His recommendations
included higher taxes, raising the minimum age to 21 from 18, incorporating
e-cigarettes into smoke-free laws, and restricting marketing that encourages
use among youth and young adults.
On Tuesday, Dr. Murthy called the new data “good news, but
e-cigarettes remain the most commonly used tobacco product among our nation’s
youth.” He said he hoped his proposed policies would result in a continued
decline in e-cigarette rates among teens.
The
e-cigarette and vapor industry, estimated at $4.1 billion this year by Wells Fargo, was largely
unregulated until August, when the Food and Drug Administration assumed
regulatory authority. A new product-approval process will be phased in over
three years.
The new data could help fuel the public debate about the potential
benefits and risks of e-cigarettes. Some groups, including industry advocates
and the Royal College of Physicians in the U.K., have argued that e-cigarettes
should be promoted as a means to help adults quit smoking conventional
cigarettes.
The consensus among researchers is that e-cigarettes are less
harmful than cigarettes because they don’t combust.
Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/e-cigarette-use-falls-among-teens-1481650108