Sep 14, 2024 3 min read

One of the unquestionable triumphs in public health over the last several decades has been the decline of cigarette smoking among all age groups.

In the 1960s, 40% of adults smoked, a number that has now been whittled down to just 11%. And as recently as 1997, almost 1 in 4 American high school seniors smoked cigarettes. In 2021, the rate of youth smoking has cratered to just a little more than 2%. The same goes for young adults – in 2000, 26% of Americans aged between 18 and 24 smoked cigarettes, and that number is now at 7%.

Last week, a report from the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration had additional good news to report – fewer young people are using e-cigarettes – or “vaping,” in shorthand – than they have at any time in the last decade.

According to a survey conducted from January to May, fewer than 8% of high school students said that they vaped, a precipitous drop from the 27% who said they did in 2019, vaping’s high point among that age cohort. The same survey also found that just 6% of students in middle school vaped. Brian King, who leads the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco division, called it “a monumental public health win.”

To those who are not familiar, e-cigarettes heat a liquid and users can breathe in the vapor it generates. It contains nicotine, and when e-cigarettes first arrived on the market, a selling point was that they were less dangerous than tobacco cigarettes because they did not contain the tar that is a cause of lung and oral cancers in longtime cigarette smokers. But the reality is that vaping is not a healthy habit.

First, because e-cigarettes don’t burn like their tobacco counterparts, there’s not a point at which people naturally stop taking in the nicotine from them. This can lead people to vape much more than they would have smoked. And like tobacco cigarettes, users inhale harmful chemicals when they vape, such as nickel and lead.

As of February 2020, close to 3,000 people had been hospitalized for health problems related to vaping, and 68 deaths had been reported because of lung illnesses. During the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, studies found that vaping exacerbated the symptoms of the disease. Vaping has also been linked to seizures.

Here’s what the American Lung Association advises: “E-cigarettes are not safe and can cause irreversible lung damage and lung disease. No one should use e-cigarettes or any other tobacco product.”

So, basically, if you’re vaping, you should consider quitting. And if you’re not vaping, don’t start.