Last week, five and a half months after the CDC and FDA published selective information on 2021 teen vaping (generating frightening “epidemic” headlines in major news media), the CDC finally released data from the 2021 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS).
I have confirmed the CDC finding that “11.3% of high school students (1.72 million) … reported current (past 30 day) e-cigarette use” (here).
However, the CDC failed to mention that this is a 58% reduction in high school vaping from peak prevalence of 27.5% (or 4.1 million) in 2019. The survey also indicates that high school cigarette smoking declined to 1.9%.
As indicated in the chart, this represents a profound alteration from 2018, when the vaping rate among high schoolers increased substantially. The vaping rate rose again in 2019, but plummeted the next two years. Importantly, during that period the smoking rate fell 77%, from 8.3% to 1.9%. Tobacco prohibitionists’ claim that vaping would prove a gateway to smoking was without merit. In fact, it is now clear that vaping helped cancel smoking.
Dr. Brad Rodu – Tobacco Truth – 2022-03-24.