CDC study: Teenage vaping soared last year, as cigarette use declined

In recent years, teens have quickly abandoned traditional smoking and adopted the latest and most modern way to consume nicotine: vaping.

Last year alone, more than 3.6 million college and high school students were using state-of-the-art electronic cigarettes, like San Francisco-based Juul, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC conducted the report in the spring of 2018, interviewing more than 20,000 high school and college students about their tobacco use in the previous month. While traditional smoking has decreased, vaping has exploded: nearly 30% of high school students who reported using e-cigarettes said they were vaping at least 20 days last month, an increase of 40% per year. compared to 2017.

"The explosive growth in e-cigarette consumption by youth over the past year threatens to reverse the gains made in reducing youth smoking," said CDC Director Robert R Redfield, in a statement. "It puts a new generation at risk for nicotine addiction."

Critics and public health officials have already asked Juul, valued at $ 38 billion and controlling over 70% of the e-cigarette market, to take drastic action to prevent his product from falling between the hands of young people.

This has come to the point where the FDA official has summoned Juul and Altria, who owns 30% of the company, to Washington to discuss the increase in the number of teenagers using his product. Last November, under tremendous federal pressure, Juul said he would stop selling his flavored products in stores – the idea being that flavored products are more appealing to young people. The CDC report indicates that 73% of high school students who used tobacco products in the last 30 days reported using a flavored tobacco product.

The CDC study concluded by saying that many teens use two or more tobacco products. Some researchers believe that vaping is only the gateway to traditional packs, even as smoking in the United States goes down.

"We are determined to combat the use by miners of vaping products, including JUUL products," said a spokeswoman for Juul Labs in a statement sent to Business Insider. "Our mission is to eliminate cigarettes by offering existing adult smokers a real alternative to combusted cigarettes."

Read the full CDC report here.