MONDAY, Sept. 23, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Vaping is increasing among adolescents, with significant increases seen from 2018 to 2019, according to a research letter published online Sept. 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Richard Miech, Ph.D., from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues examined adolescents’ vaping of nicotine using data from nationally representative samples of 12th-, 10th-, and eighth-grade students. A total of 43,703 respondents were surveyed in 2017, 44,482 in 2018, and 42,531 in 2019.
The researchers found that from 2018 to 2019, there were significant increases in 30-day nicotine vaping in samples at each of the three grade levels. From 2017 to 2019, in each of the three grades, vaping prevalence more than doubled. The prevalence of use during the previous 30 days was more than one in four, more than one in five, and more than one in 11 students in 12th, 10th, and eighth grades, respectively, in 2019. In each grade, significant increases were noted in students who had vaped nicotine during the previous 12 months and those who had ever vaped nicotine from 2018 to 2019. The prevalence of daily vaping also increased to 12, 7, and 2 percent in 12th, 10th, and eighth grades, respectively.
“New efforts are needed to protect youth from using nicotine during adolescence, when the developing brain is particularly susceptible to permanent changes from nicotine use and when almost all nicotine addiction is established,” the authors write.
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