The latest government study on teen vaping suggests there’s been little progress in keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of kids.
FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2020 photo a woman holds a flavored disposable vape device in New York. A government study on adolescent vaping, released on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, finds more than 2.5 million U.S. kids were using some form of e-cigarette in 2022, suggesting theres been little progress in keeping vaping devices out of the hands of teenagers. – The latest government study on teen vaping suggests there's been little progress in keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of kids.
Despite its persistence, vaping appears to be less popular than it was: In 2019, 28% of high schoolers said they had recently vaped.Anecdotally, the 2021-22 school year was worse than it was before the pandemic, said Mike Rinaldi, principal of Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut.
The study asked about use of e-cigarettes and other vaping devices in the previous 30 days. In addition to the 14% of high school students who said they vaped recently, about 3% of middle schoolers said they had done so.Nearly 85% of the youth who vaped used flavored products. Favored brands included Puff Bar and Vuse, followed by Hyde and Smok.
The agency also said it ordered Hyde manufacturer Magellan Technology to remove its products from the market, after rejecting its application for FDA authorization. Some kids also may have been scared away by a 2019 outbreak of vaping-related illnesses and deaths — most of them tied to a filler in black market vaping liquids that contained THC, the chemical that makes marijuana users feel high.