CDC: More Than 2.5 Million Teens Using E-Cigarettes

The number of teenagers using e-cigarettes has jumped by 500,000 this year, or 24%, as more than 2.5 million students in middle school and high school have admitted to using the devices in the past 30 days, according to a new study from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This study shows that our nation's youth continue to be enticed and hooked by an expanding variety of e-cigarette brands delivering flavored nicotine," Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, said in a statement.

"Our work is far from over. It's critical that we work together to prevent youth from starting to use any tobacco product — including e-cigarettes — and help all youth who do use them, to quit."

The study focused on all e-cigarette usage:

• More than 1 in 4 teens use e-cigarettes daily, and more than 4 in 10 used them in 20 of the past 30 days.
• Among those who use e-cigarettes, 14.5% use Puff Bar, 12.5% use Vuse, 5.5% use Hyde, 4% use SMOK, and 21.8% use a brand not listed in the survey.
• 85% reported using flavored e-cigarette products that federal regulators have pushed to crack down on.
• More than 14% of high schoolers and 3% of youth are using the devices.

"The FDA remains deeply concerned about e-cigarette use among our nation's youth. It's clear that we still have a serious public health problem that threatens the years of progress we have made combatting youth tobacco product use," said the FDA's commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf.

The CDC published the findings Thursday as part of the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey.

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