ALTANTA -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 8 released the latest data from its National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which showed a historic decline in the youth smoking rate. As of 2015, 10.8% of high school students smoked, marking a 31% decline from the 2013 survey and a 41% decline from the 2011 survey. As reported by Business Insider, this 10.8% figure was the lowest smoking rate in the CDC survey’s 25-year history.
But not everyone was celebrating. As cigarette use hit historic lows, electronic cigarette use rose. In 2015, 24% of high schoolers reported using a vapor product in the past 30 days (up from 1% in 2011).
“Current cigarette smoking is at an all-time low, which is great news,” said CDC director Tom Frieden in a press release. “However, it’s troubling to see that students are engaging in new risk behaviors, such as using e-cigarettes.”
American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown expressed similar concerns. “Vaping has become so prevalent among U.S. high school students that it's graduated to 'risky behavior' status," she said in a press release. “The fact that e-cigs and other electronic nicotine products have surged in popularity with such an impressionable age group is extremely alarming.”
Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, disagreed, pointing to historic declines not just in the overall teen smoking rate, but also the frequent smoking rate (3.4%, a 39% decline), daily smoking rate (3.2%, a 42% decline), and overall tobacco use (18.5%, a 23% decline).
“I have to admit that the anti-smoking groups are correct about electronic cigarettes: These products are indeed a gateway,” he wrote on his Tobacco Analysis blog. “They are a gateway away from smoking.
“It is increasingly becoming clear that the advent of vaping has contributed to the most marked decline in youth smoking in recent history,” he continued. “In contrast to what the anti-smoking groups are saying, overall tobacco use is falling, not staying the same, and the use of e-cigarettes is not undermining progress in reducing youth smoking but contributing to it.”
Siegel clarified that the smoking declines did not mean that high schoolers should be encouraged to vape, describing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ban on the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors and other efforts to reduce youth usage as “warranted.” Instead, he suggested that the data debunks the theory that electronic cigarettes are a gateway to combustible-tobacco use.
“Vaping is clearly not resulting in the re-normalization of smoking,” said Siegel. “It is quite the opposite. Vaping is helping to further de-normalize smoking … helping to make smoking ever more unpopular and uncool.”
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