The CDC is reporting that vaping use is exploding, and it's not helping lower cigarette rates.
The vaping fad may officially be out of control — and it’s not putting a dent in tobacco numbers, officials are saying.
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that in an average high school class of 30 students, seven of them were tobacco users in 2015 — that’s about 4.7 million children and teenagers nationwide.
At this rate, 5.6 million Americans under 18 years of age will die prematurely at some point from a disease that is smoking related, the CDC says.
Although conventional cigarette usage is starting to dip, the e-cigarette market has absolutely exploded, jumping from 1.5 percent to 16 percent for high school students from 2011 to 2015, and 0.6 percent to 5.3 percent in middle school. That’s about a 1,000 percent increase.
That means kids aren’t saying no to tobacco — they’re just using a different kind of tobacco.
“E-cigarettes are now the most commonly used tobacco product among youth, and use continues to climb,” CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. said in the statement. “No form of youth tobacco use is safe. Nicotine is an addictive drug and use during adolescence may cause lasting harm to brain development.”
“We’re very concerned that one in four high school students use tobacco, and that almost half of those use more than one product,” added Corinne Graffunder, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. “We know about 90 percent of all adult smokers first try cigarettes as teens. Fully implementing proven tobacco control strategies could prevent another generation of Americans from suffering from tobacco-related diseases and premature deaths.”
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