New survey suggests little progress on e-cigarettes for US teens

NEW YORK (AP) — Little progress has been made in keeping e-cigarettes out of children’s hands, a new government survey of teen e-cigarettes suggests.

Data appeared to point to more high school students using e-cigarettes, with 14% saying they had recently used an e-cigarette, according to survey results released Thursday.last year Investigationabout 11% said they recently smoked e-cigarettes.

But experts warn that changes in the study make it difficult to compare the two.

“Evaluating trends since the pandemic remains difficult,” said Alyssa Harlow, a University of Southern California researcher who studies e-cigarette use among young people.

Educators say vaping is still a big problem.

According to Mike Rinaldi, principal of West Hill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, the 2021-2022 school year was worse than it was before the pandemic. That school year was the first year most children had returned from remote learning following his COVID-19 lockdown, Rinaldi noted, and many children had mental health issues and pandemic-related problems. I speculated that he may have started e-cigarettes to cope with stress.

Matt Foker, principal of nearby Stanford High School, said children smoking e-cigarettes in school restrooms and stairwells remain a “constant battle.”

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have authored a new study. It’s based on an online survey of approximately 28,000 middle and high school students in the United States between January 18 and May 31.

The survey asked about e-cigarette and other e-cigarette use over the past 30 days. About 3% of middle school students said they had ever smoked an e-cigarette, in addition to his 14% of high school students who said they had recently smoked an e-cigarette.

About 28% of e-cigarette smokers said they smoke daily.

Nearly 85% of youth who smoked e-cigarettes used flavored products. Favorite brands included Puff Bar and Vuse, followed by Hyde and Smok.

In 2019, 28% of high school students said they had recently smoked an e-cigarette.

Over the past three years, federal and state laws and regulations have raised the purchasing age for tobacco and e-cigarette products, banning nearly all teen-preferred flavors from small, cartridge-based e-cigarettes.

Some children may have been frightened by the 2019 outbreak of e-cigarette-related illness and death. Most of it is related to fillers in her THC-containing black market e-liquid, a chemical that makes marijuana users feel high.

Leaders of one advocacy group said they were concerned that the fight to reduce e-cigarette use among young people was going poorly.

This figure “may not reflect the reality of youth e-cigarette use. E-cigarette use among these youth is experiencing this urgent and ongoing adolescent public health crisis.” It’s something we hear routinely from parents, teachers, pediatricians, and prevention professionals who care about it,” said the group. , the parent opposed to Vaping E-Cigarettes said in a statement.

The FDA has struggled to regulate a sprawling e-cigarette environment that includes both established companies and smaller start-ups. It has been ridiculed by Congress and health advocates for missing multiple deadlines to make decisions on millions of e-cigarette products submitted by companies.

FDA tried to ban Citing questions about potential health risks, it unveiled a product from major e-cigarette maker Juul earlier this summer. was forced to

In a survey this year, about one-fifth of teens who smoked e-cigarettes reported using Juul recently, but Juul was no longer their favorite brand. That’s a big change from his 2019, when more than half of teens said their Juul was their go-to brand.

Instead, many young people have turned to e-cigarettes that provide lab-made nicotine. This is an FDA oversight loophole that Congress closed earlier this year.despite getting new permissions Over these products, the FDA missed a mid-July deadline to make a decision on millions of products, including single-use puff bar e-cigarettes.

Like several other companies, Puff Bar last year modified its fruit-and-candy-flavored e-cigarettes to use lab-produced nicotine to evade FDA scrutiny.