Friday, October 7, 2022

@CDCTobaccoFree is Obsessed with Teen Vaping, But It Has Reduced Far More Harmful Teen Smoking

 

Yesterday the CDC released results from this year's National Youth Tobacco Survey, and the agency focused only on teen vaping.  The data will likely be embargoed for several months, preventing analysis by independent investigators.  The CDC never mentioned smoking, so I expanded findings from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) that I originally published in this blog (here).   

The new results, seen in the chart at left, are crystal clear.  Everyone knows that teen vaping started after 2010.  Teen smoking had been declining prior to that, but the pace was modest.  The pace accelerated after 2010, and the connection to vaping is not coincidental. 

Unfortunately, NSDUH has never collected teen vaping data -- yet another bizarre omission by government health authorities.

Another important point is that the NSDUH calculated the teen smoking rate in 2018 to be 5%.  This is far lower than NYTS rate of 8.3% for the same year.  I have previously documented that NYTS smoking rates are much higher than those recorded in other federal surveys.

 

No comments: