Almost 2 Million Fewer U.S. Teenagers Are Vaping Now Compared to Last Year, CDC Data Show

Almost 2 million fewer U.S. teenagers report using e-cigarettes in 2020 compared to 2019, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Youth e-cigarette use remains an epidemic,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said in a statement released Wednesday, but the decline in underage vaping is dramatic. About 20% of U.S. high school students and 5% of middle schoolers who responded to the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey said they’d used an e-cigarette in the last 30 days, compared to 27.5% and 10.5% in 2019. That means about 3.6 million teenagers are now considered current e-cigarette users, down from 5.4 million last year. The news comes on the same day e-cigarette manufacturers must submit applications for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval after a years-long regulatory lull. The FDA gained the ability to regulate e-cigarettes in 2016. At that point, companies were required to apply for agency approval before selling any new products, but manufacturers that had e-cigarettes on the market before 2016 were not required to submit applications for their products until now. In the applications, e-cigarette companies must prove that the potential public-health benefits of their products—namely, whether they help cigarette smokers switch to a less-risky product—outweigh the downsides, like addicting new and underage users. If fewer teenagers are vaping, e-cigarette makers may have an easier time convin...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized News Vaping Source Type: news