(17 Dec 2018) LEADIN:
Twice as many high school students are using nicotine-tinged electronic cigarettes compared with last year.
That's according a large annual survey teen smoking, drinking and drug use in the United States.
STORYLINE:
The vaping explosion is a big worry for US health officials who say nicotine is harmful to the developing brains of teenagers.
Some researchers believe vaping will make youngsters more likely to take up cigarettes, and perhaps later, try other drugs.
The survey covers teenagers between fifteen and eighteen years old
The jump in vaping use was the largest single-year rise ever seen in the survey's 44-year history, far surpassing the surge in marijuana smoking seen in 1976.
Lead researcher Richard Miech from the University of Michigan explains: "Monitoring the Future is an annual study of adolescence. Its purpose is to track trends and adolescent drug use. We want to see which drugs are gaining in significance and which ones are falling. And the big finding this year was about vaping. We found a very big jump in vaping among adolescents. Among 10th and 12th graders, it was the largest jump we've ever seen in any substance that we've tracked for the past 43 years."
Miech spells out how dramatic the increase in use is: "And in 2018, 20 percent said they had vaped nicotine in the past 30 days. The previous year, the same question, it was only 10 percent. So that's a 10 percent increase in the number of 12th grade adolescents who are vaping nicotine."
The study echoes the findings of a government survey of teens this year, which also found a dramatic rise in vaping.
It said e-cigarette use nearly doubled this year among U.S. high school teenagers and was up about 50 percent among middle school children.
Miech says the evidence is clearly there:
"I wouldn't call them surprising, so much. There've been a lot of reports in the media from schools where school principals report there's been a huge increase in vaping, particularly with a new device called a juul, J-U-U-L. And I've got lots of calls from reporters this past year actually asking about that. This is the one of the first studies, not the first, but one of the first studies to show that this increase really was quite substantial," he says.
"Well, I think it's a warning sign to tell you the truth. I think right now we've found that it's profitable for some companies to addict children into nicotine which I don't see any redeeming value to myself. And literally there's billions of dollars to be made in this, and so it's important for us to have some policies and regulations to try to prevent this from happening in the future," Miech adds.
"No matter what kids can vape they are really taking to vaping it.
Miech is particularly concerned about new developers in the vaping market, some products resemble computer flash drives, can be recharged in USB ports and can be used discreetly
"These JUULS, a specific type of vaping device, are very easily concealable. They look like a flash drive and you can put them in your pocket and nobody can really stop you from carrying them into school. They're very hard to detect."
After vaping and alcohol, the most common thing teenagers use is marijuana according to the survey.
About 1 in 4 students said they'd used marijuana at least once in the past year. It was more common in older teens. About one in seventeen high school seniors said they use marijuana every day.
Overall, marijuana smoking is about the same level as it was the past few years. Marijuana vaping has increased.
Experts say it's not clear what's behind those trends.
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