Use of e-cigarettes or vapes among US youth has dropped to the lowest level of the decade, a new report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration revealed.
According to CNN, the National Youth Tobacco Survey, published on Thursday, September 5, found that the e-cigarette usage among middle and high school students has dropped from 2.13 million students in 2023 to 1.63 million students in 2024.
Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement, “While it’s encouraging to see these numbers currently remaining relatively low, the bottom line is that we are concerned about any youth-appealing tobacco product.”
He further added, “Our guard is up. We are aware of the reported growing sales trends for nicotine pouches and are closely monitoring the evolving tobacco product landscape for threats to public health, particularly when it comes to kids.”
Meanwhile, the sale of nicotine pooches has been rising since 2016. As per survey data, about 1.8% of the middile and high school students use nicotine pouches as compared to the 1.5% of the last year.
The director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Centre for Tobacco Products, Brian King, asserted in a briefing that tobacco use among youth is a ‘completely preventable health risk.’
He described, “We’re concerned with any tobacco product use among kids, and that includes nicotine pouches. So, we’re committed to doing everything we can to reduce and prevent use of these products, as we would with other tobacco products.”
To note, the decline in vaping came after the FDA since 2023 issued over 1,000 warning letters and 240 civil penalties to the retailers and supply chain for selling Elf Bar products illegally to teens.
