The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention released a report this week which warned tobacco use was rising in American high schoolers after it found an increase of 38 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to The Associated Press.
The CDC blamed the rise of e-cigarettes for rolling back some of the progress the government made in recent decades to keep young people away from nicotine.
More than one in four high schoolers and one in 14 middle schoolers reported using a tobacco product in the last month, which adds up to 4.9 million kids in total.
E-Cigarettes were still the most commonly used tobacco product among teens last year, which CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield said was "putting a new generation at risk for nicotine addiction."
The report gathered data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, an annual poll of American students which asks them about their use of e-cigarettes, cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products.
Brian King, who is the deputy director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, said the "progress that we've made over the past years has been completely erased. And it's a primary result of e-cigarettes."
The compact battery-operated devices heat up liquid nicotine so the users can inhale it as a vapor, and is also more discreet than smoking cigarettes.
Juul has emerged as one of the most popular brands with younger people, even though the Food and Drug Administration threatened to crack down on the brand for advertising which was specifically marketed to teenagers.
The Juul device resembles a flash drive and can be re-charged with a laptop but comes in fruity and sweet flavors, another factor federal regulators argue makes teens more likely to use it.
King said even though cigarette use was declining since 1998 with American youth, "However within the past three years, we have not seen any change in cigarette smoking. We're certainly not seeing any progress when it comes to e-cigarettes."
"What we ultimately don't want to do when it comes to tobacco product use is play a game of whack-a-mole," King said, "where we're allowing certain products to go down, and certain products to go up. When it comes to youth, there's no redeeming aspects of any form of tobacco product, whether it's smoked, smokeless or electronic."
Anti-tobacco organizations also said the findings in the report were troubling.
"These results are strong evidence that e-cigarettes are not helping to drive down youth cigarette use," Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a statement. "Indeed, if anything, the evidence to date indicates that e-cigarettes could increase the number of kids who smoke cigarettes."
Robin Koval, CEO and president of the Truth Initiative, an anti-smoking organization, released a statement which said the CDC revealed the "disturbing link" between youths using e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes.
"This is a public health emergency that cannot be ignored," she said.
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
Photo:
AP / Steven Senne
