FDA Is Targeting E-Cigarette Retailers, But They’re Not Teens’ Primary E-Cigarette Source

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb reportedly testified at a House Appropriations subcommittee April 17 about “excessive use of e-cigarettes among youths…Gottlieb said the FDA will crack down on youths' use of e-cigarettes in the coming weeks.  ‘We are going to take some vigorous enforcement steps to try to perceive what we see is inappropriate use by youth,’ Gottlieb said, refusing to elaborate on when the action will happen.  The agency has several avenues for targeting retailers that are selling to minors.  Those include a warning letter, massive fines, or banning the retailer from selling any tobacco or e-cigarettes.”

A common theme among e-cigarette prohibitionists is that the protection of children justifies all forms of regulation.  Beyond that, the commissioner’s remarks are undercut by the fact that only a small percentage of children have tried e-cigarettes, and only a tiny fraction of those youths bought c-cigarettes from retailers.  Support for this is seen in the FDA’s Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) survey.  The PATH youth survey collected detailed information about tobacco use from 13,628 participants age 12-17 years in 2013-2014.  Based on the survey’s sophisticated weighting formula, the figures below are estimates for 25 million teens across the U.S.

The data reveal that about 2.6 million teens had ever used an e-cigarette in 2013-14.  Of these, about 771,000 had used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days – the widely accepted definition of “current” use among youth and consistent with another federal survey of teen tobacco use (discussed here).  This means that there were far fewer current e-cig users in PATH than currently used alcohol (1.83 million) or marijuana (1.24 million), which is also consistent with other federal surveys (discussed here).

Current e-cig users were asked: “In the past 30 days, how did you usually get your own e-cigarettes/cartridges and e-liquid?”  Here are the results:

PATH Survey: How Did You Get Your E-Cigarettes?
How	Number of teens	Percentage
Someone offered me one	353,700	46%
Gave someone else money to buy them	126,500	16%
Bought them myself	75,700	9.9%
Asked someone to give me one	73,700	9.7%
Got them some other way	52,500	6.9%
Took them from a store or another person	31,600	4.1%
Bought them from another person	24,700	3.2%
Don’t know, refused to answer	32,400	4.2%
All	770,800	100%

The table shows that only 10% of current teen users, about 76,000, bought e-cigarettes for themselves.  In other words, while the FDA and other government agencies pursue vaping manufacturers and retailers, the vast majority of teens get e-cigarettes from unregulated sources.  Of course, even more teens use alcohol, which is only sold to adults age 21+ years, and marijuana, the sale of which is legal to adults only in limited states.

Federal Officials, Please Pay Attention to Federal Surveys: E-Cigarettes Are Not Gateway Products

I noted in 2013 that the CDC director’s claim – that “many kids are starting out with e-cigarettes and then going on to smoke conventional cigarettes” – was pure gateway speculation (here).  Youth surveys had just started collecting information that teens were using e-cigarettes, but there was zero evidence that they were “going on to smoke.”

In January I presented data from the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey showing that e-cigarette experimentation since 2011 did not produce an epidemic of teen smoking (here).  The 2017 Monitoring the Future survey, illustrated in the chart at left, provides further evidence of a steady decline in cigarette smoking among high school seniors.  In 2017, the smoking rate in MTF dropped below 10% for the first time in history.  At 9.7%, the rate is almost half that of 2011 (18.7%), while the vaping rate remained at 16-17%.  Meanwhile, high school seniors used alcohol and marijuana at far higher rates than cigarettes (33% and 23% respectively).  Nineteen percent of seniors reported being drunk in the past month.

MTF vaping data in 2014-2016 didn’t specify the liquids used; in 2017 MTF collected information on non-specific vaping and vaping nicotine and marijuana in the past month.  Nonspecific vaping, illustrated by the green line in the chart, was around 16%, nicotine vaping was 11%, and marijuana vaping was 4.9% in the past month.

Federal officials are still obsessed with the vape-to-smoke gateway, despite virtually no evidence.  FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently tweeted a warning: “The [e-cigarette] industry isn’t sustainable if it leads to a whole generation of youth initiation on tobacco.” (here) 

I tweeted a reply urging Dr. Gottlieb to look at his agency’s data from the “…PATH survey of 9,909 never-smoking teens. One year later, 219 (2.2%) had smoked in past 30 days. All awful, but 175 (80%) had no prior tobacco product use; only 11 had used e-cigs. FDA data shows vaping not major gateway to teen smoking [here].” (emphasis added)

Federal officials should stop claiming that vaping is a gateway to smoking, because evidence is absent in all federal surveys.

1.7 Million High Schoolers Vaped in 2016, As Both Vaping and Smoking Declined

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2016 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) shows that 1.08 million (7.2%) American high school students used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, 580,000 (3.9%) smoked, and 660,000 (4.4%) used both products.

Compared with 2015, smoking declined by about 14% and vaping by 28%.

The apparent spike in e-cigarette use from 2013 to 2014 was partially due to what scientific researchers refer to as an artifact, as it stemmed from a change in the survey design.  Questions about e-cigarette use were bundled with those for other rarely used tobacco products until 2014, when they appeared in a separate section. 

The NYTS also collected information on how many days e-cigarettes were used in the past month.  The chart below shows that 7 out of 10 students who vaped but did not smoke used e-cigarettes five days or fewer.  This is basically “party” or “weekend” vaping, rather than regular use.  While half of high school students who vaped and smoked used e-cigs five or fewer days, 22% used them all 30 days.

Last June, the CDC published selected information from the 2016 NYTS (here), listing smoking and vaping rates separately, effectively double-counting the 660,000 high-schoolers who vaped and smoked.  The CDC only released the full NYTS data set earlier this month (here).
   

The federal data confirm that e-cigarette experimentation by youth since 2011 has not produced an epidemic of smoking.  In fact, the decline in youth smoking accelerated to a record low rate.