Nationwide, youth e-cigarette use drops to lowest level in a decade

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

A half million fewer young people vaped this year than last, according to an analysis of the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey.

Brian King, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products, called the decline a “monumental public health win,” but he also cautioned that there is more work to do.

“We can’t rest on our laurels, as there’s still more work to do to further reduce youth e-cigarette use,” he said in a news release.

The survey reported that 1.63 million middle and high school students had used e-cigarettes at least once in the past 30 days, down from 2.13 million students in 2023. Further, the FDA news release says teen use in 2024 is about one-third of what it was at its peak in 2019, when more than 5 million youth reported using e-cigs in the past 30 days.

The decrease was mainly driven by a drop in e-cigarette use among high school students, which fell from 1.56 million students in 2023 to 1.21 million in 2024, according to the release. There wasn’t a significant difference in middle-school use in the past year.

According to the survey, 7.8% of high school students and 3.5% of middle school students said they had used e-cigs at least once over the past 30 days.

According to the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 19.7%  of  Kentucky high school students and 10.6% of middle school students said they had used an electronic vaping product on at least one day in the 30 days before the survey. That’s down from 21.9% and 11.3% respectively in the 2021 YRBS.

Among e-cigarette users, the vast majority of them use flavored products (87.6%) and disposable e-cigarette products were the most common product type used. The most commonly reported brands were Elf Bar (36.1%), Breeze (19.9%), Mr. Fog (15.8%), Vuse (13.7%) and JUUL (12.6%).

The survey also found that more teens are using nicotine pouches. The 2024 survey found that 1.8% of the students used nicotine pouches in the past 30 days, up from 1.5% in 2023.

Among nicotine pouch users, Zyn (68.7%) was the most popular brand followed by on! (14.2%), Rogue (13.6%), Velo (10.7%) and Juice Head ZTN (9.8%). More than 85% of pouch users said they used flavored products.

The National Youth Tobacco Survey is an annual school-based, self-administered survey of U.S. middle and high school students. This year’s survey included nearly 30,000 students from 283 schools and was conducted from Jan. 22 to May 22.

More work to do
Melinda Ickes, who is a professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Education and director of several programs to decrease youth tobacco use in Kentucky, such as #iCANendthetrend, lauded the drop in numbers, but she too said there is more work to be done.

“While the new national data released reinforces comprehensive tobacco control strategies are working, including the numerous public education campaigns and access to tailored quitting resources, there is still a lot of work to do,” she said in an email. “We cannot let down our guard considering the large percentage of youth e-cigarette users who reported frequent or daily use, reinforcing the challenges they are facing with nicotine dependence.”

The national survey found that more than one in four of youth e-cigarette users are using the product daily and more than one in three said they had used e-cigarettes in at least 20 of the last 30 days. Ickes also noted that oral nicotine pouch use among Kentucky youth is higher than what is being reported nationally.

“There has been a significant increase in initiation and use over the last two years,” she said. These products have the potential to be just as attractive to youth as e-cigarettes have been, she said.

“These products have the same characteristics that made e-cigarettes so appealing to young people, including kid-friendly flavors, heavy promotion on social media and being easy to hide,” she said. “There is a continued need for both tailored evidence-based prevention and treatment strategies to further combat this issue.”