Youth vaping levels fell to a decade-low this year, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
The use of e-cigarettes among middle and high school students has fallen from 2.13 million students in 2023 to 1.63 million students in 2024, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey, published Thursday.
The total is now about a third of the peak in 2019, health officials said, when the number totaled more than 5 million.
The latest survey took place from January 22 to May 22 and included nearly 30,000 students.
“These data remind us that we are making progress in continuing to reduce the use of major tobacco products among children,” Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon. “But we must remain vigilant.”
The decline was mainly due to a drop in e-cigarette use among high school students, which fell from 1.56 million to 1.21 million. According to the survey, there was no significant difference in e-cigarette use among middle school students over the past year. — although King noted that usage among middle school students has been declining since 2019.
King attributed the overall decline in part to legal measures taken by the FDA in partnership with the Justice Department to limit consumption.
Since the beginning of 2023, the FDA has issued more than 1,000 warning letters and 240 civil penalties against retailers — as well as others in the supply chain — illegally selling Elf Bar products to teens, according to a statement. Elf Bar makes disposable vapes in fruit and candy flavors that are popular with teens.
Additionally, the agency has issued import alerts for Elf Bar brand products, placing them on the “red list,” which allows the federal government to detain products without full inspection upon entry into the United States.
These actions appear to have had an effect: there has been a significant drop in the use of the Elf Bar, with 36.1% of students reporting using it this year, compared to 56.7% in 2023, according to the survey.
The FDA “has hit the retail industry with inspections and crackdowns on those who break the law,” King said.
Dr. Sharon Levy, chief of the division of addiction medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, said the latest findings are good news, but much more work needs to be done.
Among young e-cigarette users, 26.3% reported using them daily. The majority of users preferred flavored vapes, with fruit being the most popular flavor (62.8%), followed by candy (33.3%) and mint (25.1%).
“Do we really need to have blue raspberry vaping on the market?” Levy said. “Limiting that stuff really reduces rates, so let’s go all in. Let’s just get this product off the market.”
Levy said the way the products work is also increasingly dangerous. When Juul, a popular e-cigarette brand, launched in 2015, it advertised itself as containing the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes, or about 200 puffs, she said. Products on the market today offer up to 15,000 puffs.
“It’s important because unlike cigarettes, when you vape, there’s no signal to stop,” Levy said. “It’s like popcorn. Before you know it, you’ve eaten it all.”
The survey also found that use of nicotine pouches, including Zyn, continues among teens, Levy said. The tobacco-free pouches, which users slip between their lips and gums and then throw away, are often undetectable because they contain no smoke or spit.
In the survey, 1.8% of young people reported using nicotine pouches in 2024, similar to the 1.5% who reported using them in 2023. That’s about half a million people. Of those, 22.4% reported using them daily.
The most frequently cited brand among this group was Zyn, a Swedish brand that was acquired by Philip Morris in 2022.
Levy called the products “problematic” because they are often confused with nicotine replacement therapies used by adults to help them quit smoking.
“They’re really quite different,” she said. “It’s a different form of nicotine than the ones in FDA-approved nicotine replacement products, which give you a slow, steady release of nicotine that suppresses withdrawal symptoms and helps prevent cravings.”
“It won’t help you quit,” she added.
nbcnews
