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Results from 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey show dramatic increase in e-cigarette use among youth over past year: FDA

 

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U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new findings from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) showing that more than 3.6 million middle and high school students were current (past 30 day) e-cigarette users in 2018, a dramatic increase of more than 1.5 million students since last year. The sharp rise in e-cigarette use has resulted in an increase in overall youth tobacco product use, reversing a decline seen in recent years, and is prompting a series of steps by the FDA to curb youth use trends.

According to the findings, the number of U.S. high school students who reported being current e-cigarette users increased 78 percent between 2017 and 2018 to 3.05 million (or 20.8 percent). Numbers among middle school students rose 48 percent to 570,000 (or 4.9 percent). The study authors suggest the rise in e-cigarette use in the last year is likely due to the recent popularity of certain types of e-cigarettes, such as JUUL.

The uptick in e-cigarette use has led overall tobacco product use to increase by 38 percent among high school students (to 27.1 percent) and by 29 percent among middle school students (to 7.2 percent) in the last year, reversing the positive decline seen over the last few years.

Additionally, the survey also shows that high school students who reported being current e-cigarette users also reported using the product more frequently. In the last year, the proportion of those using the product more regularly (on 20 or more of the past 30 days) increased from 20 percent to 27.7 percent, an alarming one-year rise. The 2018 NYTS also found that among high school e-cigarette users, there was a significant increase in current flavored e-cigarette use within the past year, from 60.9 percent to 67.8 percent.

NYTS is a cross-sectional, voluntary, school-based, self-administered, pencil-and-paper survey of U.S. middle and high school students. The data for the 2018 NYTS were collected from March to May 2018. The alarming rise in use and the threat of a new generation of young people becoming addicted to nicotine prompted the FDA and CDC to release these data earlier than usual so as to encourage e-cigarette companies and retailers, state, county and local health departments, public health organizations, and parents and educators to act immediately to curtail this crisis. The FDA and CDC plan to release the remaining data on usage rates of other tobacco products in early 2019.

Tailoring social media, digital resources and web content for parents, teachers, coaches, and other youth influencers, CDC provides states and communities with accurate, actionable, and up-to-date science and information about the risks of e-cigarettes to young people. In addition to the steps the FDA is announcing, the agency has taken a series of actions over the past several months to target the illegal sales of e-cigarettes to youth, as well as to target companies engaged in kid-friendly marketing that increases the appeal of these products to youth.

The agency also issue letter in September to five major e-cigarette manufacturers that produce JUUL, Vuse, MarkTen, blu e-cigs and Logic, which, combined, comprise more than 97 percent of the market share for closed-system e-cigarette products. These letters asked the companies to submit to the FDA within 60 days plans describing how each firm will address the widespread youth access and use of its products.  The agency also launched “The Real Cost” Youth E-Cigarette Prevention Campaign.

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