Teenage use of electronic cigarettes has tripled in the last year. This new trend is one that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls "alarming" as e-cigarettes have now taken the top spot as the most popular tobacco product among teens. According to the CDC, in 2014 2.5 million middle and high school students used e-cigarettes.
Among teens, high school students showed the most dramatic change. From 2011 to 2014, e-cigarette use jumped from just 1.5 percent to 13.4 percent, while cigarette use declined from 16 percent to 9 percent.
The report from the CDC is ased on a national survey of about 22,000 students at middle schools and high schools. Students were asked whether they had smoked or used a tobacco product in the past 30 days. Those that said yes were deemed to be current smokers.
"Exploding in popularity, e-cigarettes are Big Tobacco's tool to hook the next generation," said U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal. "As a gateway to nicotine addiction, e-cigarettes are a burgeoning market and public health menace."
"The news that cigarette smoking is at an all-time low is colored by the fact that we have seen the greatest explosion in the use of e-cigarettes that one could imagine," said Matthew Myers, executive director of the advocacy group Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.
Electronic cigarettes use a battery to convert liquid nicotine, flavoring and other chemicals into a vapor that is then inhaled by the user. In this vapor there is no smoke or tar, but there is nicotine, addictive substance found in tobacco. According to the CDC, nicotine is not only addictive but can also affect the developing brains of adolescents.
Currently, the FDA is also concerned about what else may be present in the vapor, but since it currently does not regulate e-cigarettes, much of the contents in e-cigarette vapor remains a mystery.
"There have also been studies showing because of the lack of controls of what's in e-cigarettes, some of them give off formaldehyde," said Myers. "What we've also seen is that some substances that are benign in food like vanilla when heated and inhaled become highly dangerous to the lungs."
Indeed these new statistics bring to light the importance of regulation of these products in an effort to limit the access teens have to e-cigarettes. The FDA says it has the authority to regulate e-cigarettes because they are tobacco products. It hopes to have rules in place that will include age restrictions by June.
