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Teen Vaping Far Lower Than 2014 Rate and More! Tobacco Harm Reduction News

September 6, 2024 Tobacco Harm Reduction News

High school vaping falls to just 7.8%. ZYN factory expanding to meet demand. American Lung Association spouts facts while hiding the truth. Public Health worries more about vaping than smoking in Ohio and Kentucky and much more!

Scroll to the bottom of this post for a link to the audio/video versions of this post!

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RESEARCH

New Data from the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey

The first report from the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) has been released and it’s not looking good for the “youth vaping epidemic,”  “vaping threatens to undo years of work by public health”  and “nicotine pouches are the new e-cigarettes” narratives.

Middle and high school current vaping (even one puff in the past 30 days) has DRAMATICALLY dropped from 2.13 million (10%) in 2023 to 1.63 million (5.9%) and fewer than 1.6% of youth vape daily.

Regarding nicotine pouches, the report states “no significant changes occurred in current nicotine pouch use among middle and high school students overall despite rising sales of nicotine pouches.” Maybe because it’s mostly ADULTS buying them?

Should nicotine pouch use rise as vaping continues to fall due to “crackdowns,” it would considerably lessen the weight of their arguments that kids were only attracted to vaping because of the “kid-friendly” flavors and marketing. The 2024 survey showed that basic mint was the most popular flavor by far and the most popular brands (ZYN and ON!) don’t use kid-friendly marketing.

It will be interesting to see what happened to youth SMOKING in the past year, but we must wait patiently to hear those results. Tobacco Harm Reduction advocate Skip Murray posted a thought provoking blog post on the latest teen vaping data:

READ MORE: Notes from the Field: E-Cigarette and Nicotine Pouch Use Among Middle and High School Students — United States, 2024

 

Questions for Upcoming Research on ‘Gateway’ Theory

This study “focuses on young adults who only vape nicotine and whether exposure to new and emerging nicotine and cannabis products, such as those with new flavors or product designs, leads to other tobacco or cannabis product use.” It sounds as though it will essentially be a “gateway theory” study, which could be interesting…if done without bias.

We look forward to seeing if researchers look for answers to deeper questions regarding use beyond advertising, flavors and designs, such as:

  • Do/did your parents, siblings or friends smoke or use other tobacco products?
  • Do you have any mental health conditions, whether professionally or self-diagnosed, such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, etc.?
  • Do you take medication for a mental health condition or do you use nicotine/cannabis to “self medicate?”
  • Do you identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community?
  • Do you believe you would have likely smoked cigarettes if vapor products had never been available?

In order to support the gateway theory, researchers must consider and exclude “common liability” as a possibility. Otherwise, deterring young adults from vaping may just lead to more of them smoking instead.

READ MORE: New Study Targets Marketing of Vaping Products, Influence on Young Adults

Small Study Focuses Ignores Harm Reduction Potential for Asthmatics

This small study of 50 people who smoke concluded only that “there is a direct association between airway inflammation and respiratory mechanics in patients with asthma after the use of an e-cigarette.”

Is it possible that vaping has a significantly lower impact on those with asthma than SMOKING did? Unfortunately, we don’t know from this study, because the researchers didn’t bother to seek an answer to that question. That’s a shame, because several hundred people who had asthma have reported to CASAA’s Testimonial Project that their symptoms had either significantly decreased or even disappeared completely after switching from smoking to vaping.

For example, Liana from Nevada wrote:

“I smoked for 34 years. I suffered from chronic bronchitis, asthma, and the beginnings of COPD. I tried nicotine gum and patches, counseling, etc. to quit, but nothing kept me from smoking long term. When I finally tried vaping, it worked! Within a couple months of vaping, all my respiratory problems disappeared. Vaping saved my life from the harmful effects of smoking. Every adult deserves access to safer alternatives to smoking, especially vaping.”

 

Interestingly, they didn’t find ANY significant effects after vaping in the people who smoked and didn’t have asthma, but that seemed to have no significance to them whatsoever. All they apparently wanted to find was “e-cigarettes bad.”

READ MORE: Patients With Asthma Experience Changes in Airway Inflammation Following Electronic Cigarette Use

 

TOBACCO HARM REDUCTION

ZYN Factory Expanding to Meet Demand

The Kentucky factory that manufactures Zyn is expanding to help meet demand for the safer, smoke-free alternatives to smoking.

“We are accelerating our mission toward a smoke-free future, working with our U.S. affiliates to move adults away from cigarettes and other traditional tobacco products by providing better alternatives,” said Stacey Kennedy, CEO of PMI’s U.S. business.

READ MORE: Philip Morris International is expanding a Kentucky factory making nicotine pouches

Youth “Epidemic” or Tobacco Harm Reduction?

In 21 years, high school smoking dropped from 22.9% to 1.9% and ALL tobacco/nicotine use (which includes e-cigarettes) dropped from 28.4% to 12.6%.

In the 5 years before the CDC started reporting on high school vaping (at just 1.5% in 2011,) high school smoking had declined just 4 percentage points. In the following 5 years, it dropped a whopping 7.8 points.

What changed between 2011 and 2016? Certainly not the cigarette flavor ban. That was passed back in 2009. Certainly not Tobacco 21. That was passed at the end of 2021. Hmmm…..

Despite the dramatic rise (and equally dramatic fall) in high school #vaping and the more recent (tiny) rise in the use of nicotine pouches, smoking rates continued to decline dramatically through 2023.

So this is a very important question that public health officials have been avoiding for too long:

 

TOBACCO CONTROL

Misleading “facts” from American Lung Association

We often see the claim that young people moving to tobacco harm reduction products, such as vaping and nicotine pouches, “threatens to undo years of public health efforts that had led to a decline in nicotine use” and are “creating a new generation addicted to nicotine.”

This graph is a representation of the trends in past 30 day use for high school youth and young adults 18 – 24 years old (ie. the “new generation.”) The 2021 cigarette smoking and nicotine vaping groups combined aren’t even as high as just cigarette smoking was in 2002 – and high school vaping declined even more in 2023. It’s quite clear that far fewer young people are using nicotine products than ever before. THR products are “creating a new generation addicted to nicotine?”

Their math just isn’t mathing, folks.

This Lund Report article is a perfect example and worse. Here the American Lung Association uses misdirection, a sly use of the common understanding of certain definitions and the purposeful omission of facts in an attempt to convince an unwitting public that youth vaping is an “epidemic.”

We’re going to break it down so you can learn to spot this type of obfuscation for yourself in the future!

“New research found that teenage vaping threatens to undo years of work by public health officials to cut down on tobacco use.”

This statement omits any evidence to back it up. (Note how vaping is called “tobacco use” here. That will come up later.) As our previous post pointed out, not only has smoking declined dramatically for teens and young adults over the past 20 years, but the decline was greater in the past 10 years than it was in the previous decade.

“The National Youth Tobacco survey of more than 22,000 students nationwide in 2023 found that 10% of U.S. secondary students vape nicotine, which is more than those who use all other tobacco combined.”

This is a sly use of what the public would understand as “tobacco.” Remember how they called vaping “tobacco use” earlier?

Yes, 1.56 million high school youth reported current vaping (remember, that means “even one puff in the past 30 days”) vs. the 1.21 million who used other “tobacco.” However, if you include nicotine pouches and “other” oral nicotine products (regulated as “tobacco products” by the FDA,) that number rises to 1.65 million using tobacco and nicotine products other than e-cigarettes.

Funny how certain nicotine products are only referred to as “tobacco” when it fits the narrative.

The misdirection comes into play in that previous statement by not telling you that just 12.6% of high school youth used ANY tobacco or nicotine product in 2023. Compare this to 28.4% a little over 20 years ago in 2002.

Additionally, cigarette smoking — arguably the most harmful form of tobacco/nicotine use — has dropped from 22.9% in 2002 to just 1.9% in 2023. The number of youth using tobacco AND nicotine products (including e-cigarettes) today is about HALF the number of youth who were smoking 20 years ago!

The ALA spokesperson, Erica Heartquist, “told the Capital Chronicle that 75% of 11th graders who use tobacco consume flavored products. But that appeal wanes with age: Two-thirds of adults in Oregon aged 18 to 24 reported consuming flavored nicotine products, while half that of those 25 to 34 did and only 13% of adults at least 35 years old used flavored products.”

More misdirection and omission of facts. The insinuation here is that adults have no interest in flavors, so flavors MUST only exist to attract youth.

What they don’t tell you is that the adults over the age of 35 using “tobacco or nicotine products” are far more likely to still be SMOKING (partly due to anti-vaping scaremongering). Of course adults over age 35 aren’t using flavored products, because most of them are smoking cigarettes and flavored cigarettes have been banned for about 15 years!

In Oregon, 12.6% of adults were smoking in 2021 and only 6.9% were using e-cigarettes. Most of the adults using e-cigarettes in 2021 were under the age of 35. Conversely, 10.8% of 11th graders were vaping in 2022 and smoking had dropped to just 3.2% (down from 19.9% in 2002.) Furthermore,  vaping in that group was down SIGNIFICANTLY from the high of 23.4% in 2019.

The graph above illustrates how more vaping in these age groups corresponds with more flavor use, while more smoking corresponds with less flavor use.

However, when you survey adults who exclusively use smoke-free nicotine products, they prefer non-tobacco flavors, as well. One study found that “among current vapers, the percentage of those who used flavored e-cigarettes was higher for adults aged 18-24 years (89.6%), 25-34 years (86.7%), and 35-44 years (76.0%) than for adults aged 45 years and older (60.4%),” but note how even the 45 years and older group of vapers was not much lower than the 75% for 11th graders.

And that, dear readers, is how they are able to mislead the public with “facts” while still hiding the truth. Now you know.

READ MORE: Use of flavored nicotine products poses ‘critical’ clinical challenges, review says

ALA Shift from Strategy of Misinformation to Disinformation

“The real smokescreen here is that tobacco control advocates like the ALA have shifted from a strategy of misinformation to one of disinformation; that is, intentionally spreading false information to influence public opinion….

“Moreover, by using “the children” to fearmonger, the ALA continues a long-standing national tradition of promoting “abstinence for all” over solutions that can save lives….

“Rather than finding new ways to help smokers kick the habit, the ALA is hell-bent on toppling Big Tobacco to meet its strategic imperative to create a tobacco-free future (which apparently now includes nicotine), though there is not a single precedent for full abstinence from any substance across the history of humankind.”

~ Mazen Saleh and Jeffrey S. Smith, R Street Institute

 

READ MORE: The Real Smokescreen is Nicotine Disinformation

 

Public Health More Worried About Vaping Than Smoking

What this article doesn’t tell you is that high school SMOKING is also still much higher in Ohio (3.3%) and Kentucky (4.4%) than the national average (1.9%), as well.

They urge parents to “to talk to their kids about the dangers of vaping,” but more adults — many of them parents — are also smoking more in Ohio (17.1%) and Kentucky (17.4%) than the national average (11.5%). Children of parents who smoke are far more likely to start smoking.

The good news is that adults seem to be moving towards safer e-cigarettes in Ohio (8.7%) and Kentucky (10.3%) at a higher rate than the national average (4.5% in 2021), as well. It may be that the children of parents who smoke/vape are actually vaping instead of smoking, but it seems no one wants to bother to look into that possibility.

Why does Public Health seem more worried about youth in Ohio and Kentucky vaping low risk e-cigarettes at a higher rate than the national average than the youth AND adults smoking deadly cigarettes at a higher rate than the national average?

READ MORE: Study shows 20% of Ohio and Kentucky high schoolers vape, double the national average

Kentucky Cardiologist More Wrong Than Right

Oh boy, they’re keeping us busy this week! This article from the North Kentucky Tribune featuring cardiologist Damodhar Suresh from St. Elizabeth Healthcare is a doozy. There’s so much WRONG to unpack here, but here are some highlights.

“Vaping (using e-cigarettes) is actually no safer than smoking.”

WRONG.

The FDA has authorized several e-cigarette products that met the threshold of being “appropriate for the protection of the public health” and “provided a benefit for adults who smoke cigarettes…that is sufficient to outweigh the risks of the product…”

That means vaping those products IS scientifically proven to be SAFER than smoking.

 

“Unlike cigarette smoke, e-cigarette vapor absorbs directly into the bloodstream.”

WRONG.

Studies show that, unlike cigarette smoke, non-salt e-cigarette vapor is mostly absorbed in the mouth/upper respiratory tract, where it moves into the bloodstream more slowly than cigarette smoke.

E-cigarette “salt” formulas can absorb directly from the lungs into the bloodstream (but without the deadly combustion, of course.) The few studies that compared smoking to vaping found that, while vaping nicotine salts in high doses may be a close second, smoking was still the most efficient for delivering nicotine to the brain.

 

“Nicotine is the most powerful vasoconstricting agent ever studied,” says St. Elizabeth Healthcare cardiologist Damodhar Suresh, MD. “That means, each time you vape, your arteries get smaller and smaller to the point where they are so diseased, you’re going to have a heart attack or stroke.”

WRONG.

This is a ridiculous claim. This isn’t even true with smoking. If it was true about vaping, then nicotine gums, patches and lozenges wouldn’t be touted as “safe and effective.” The effect of nicotine on arteries has mostly been studied with SMOKING, which exposes the user to far more than just nicotine, such as carbon monoxide. Studies of nicotine use without smoking (ie. NRT, snus) haven’t found increased risk of heart disease.

“According to the American College of Cardiology, if you vape, you’re 56% more likely to have a heart attack and 30% more likely to have a stroke.”

WRONG.

This has been debunked. Researchers admitted that the limitations of their study included that the “study design doesn’t allow researchers to establish causation” and that they were “unable to determine whether these outcomes may have occurred prior to using e-cigarettes.” Meaning, the reported heart attacks and strokes could have happened BEFORE the subjects even started vaping.

SIDE NOTE

This same source debunks the claim that vaping is no safer than smoking:

“Cigarette smoking carries a much higher probability of heart attack and stroke than e-cigarettes…”

These reporters need to do better!

READ MORE: St. Elizabeth Healthy Headlines: Vaping IS smoking — and is a public health emergency

 

Real people. Real Stories.

“Anecdote” #13,544:

Without access to the vaping options that worked for her—such as pleasant flavors and non-nicotine liquids—Patricia would likely still be smoking today. Adults who smoke depend on these products. What happens if those products are then banned?

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