Youth smoking is at the lowest level on record at 4.6 percent, a 70.8 percent decline since 2011.
The House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy is revisiting the controversial issue of youth vaping.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most contentious issues in public health policy was e-cigarettes and their role in transitioning smokers away from cigarettes. While it’s widely accepted that e-cigarettes are substantially less harmful than combustible cigarettes and have helped millions of smokers quit, the relationship between youth smoking and vaping products has always been a critical concern.
From 2017-19, there was a substantial rise in the number of youth using e-cigarettes. While most kids continued not to vape at all and most of those who did used the products infrequently, the sudden increase led to increased scrutiny of the products and industry practices. To combat the rise in youth vaping, the federal tobacco age was raised to 21 in 2020.
Guy Bentley – Reason Foundation – 2021-06-22.
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