The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that about 1.56 million U.S. high school students were current users (i.e., past 30 days) of e-cigarettes or other vaping products in 2023. Although this number is substantially lower than at vaping’s peak in 2019 (here), it is still represented as a public health crisis by anti-tobacco crusaders. This post takes a closer look at this number by examining other factors that were ignored by the CDC.
The chart on the left breaks down the report’s 1.56 million vapers to calculate the actual number of exclusive, or “virgin” vapers. I use a sequential subtraction method to isolate factors integral to vaping. The chart reflects CDC weighting to estimate the numbers in detail, but in the following text, acknowledging real world facts, I’ll use abbreviated estimates.
According to the CDC, there were 15.8 million high schoolers in 2023, so about 9.9% of those were current vapers, that is, they had used the product at least once in the past 30 days. About 204,000 of the 1.56 million current vapers were also current smokers, which leaves 1.36 million.
Of these remaining vapers, 397,000 “ever” smoked a cigarette, even one puff, leaving 963,000.
After subtracting another 192,600 “ever” cigar smokers, we have 770,600 current vapers.
Finally, we have a factor that the CDC completely ignores, despite its coverage in the NYTS: “ever” vaping marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or cannabidiol (CBD). There were 535,500 current vapers who had also vaped those marijuana-related products.
Now we have a reasonable estimate for virgin vapers, or those high schoolers who have not had any other exposure to similar tobacco or marijuana products. The grand total is 235,021, representing only 1.5% of all high school students.
For further context, consider the frequency of vaping among virgin vapers: 63% had vaped only 1-9 days in the past month, 6% had vaped 10-19 days, and 31% had vaped 20-30 days. While the latter group is at risk for being addicted to nicotine and vaping, these 73,092 frequent vapers represent just 4.7% of all high school vapers. Even more importantly, they represent only 0.5% of all U.S. high school students.
Vaping among high school students is a legitimate concern, but vaping is not a new, isolated epidemic or crisis threatening to enslave a generation of teens to nicotine. The NYTS demonstrates that vaping is connected with smoking cigarettes and cigars, and particularly with the use of THC/CBD.
The FDA refuses to recognize that teen vapers also smoke and toke. When the government obsesses over an imaginary “teen vaping epidemic” and denies its actual modest scope, it ignores the 480,000 adult tobacco smokers who die each year.
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