Most Adolescent Vapers Are Not Nicotine Users
From: Reason
A new study makes the CDC’s equation of smoking with tobacco use look even more ridiculous.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), having decided to regulate tobacco-free e-cigarettes as tobacco products because they deliver tobacco-derived nicotine, now has the challenge of explaining how even nicotine-free e-liquids can qualify for the same label. E-cigarette alarmists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have a similar problem. They insist on counting vaping as “tobacco use,” which leads them to claim there has been “no decline in overall youth tobacco use since 2011,” even though that is clearly not true. Now a new study in the journal Tobacco Control reveals the CDC’s position to be even more ridiculous than it already seemed, showing that a large majority of teenagers who vape are not only not consuming tobacco; they are not consuming nicotine either.
Based on data from the 2015 Monitoring the Future Study, which surveys students in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades, Richard Miech and three of his colleagues at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (which conducts the survey) report that nearly two-thirds of teenagers who have tried vaping consumed “just flavoring” the last time they did it. “Nicotine use came in a distant second,” Miech et al. write, “at about 20% in 12th and 10th grade and 13% in 8th grade.” The other options were marijuana and “don’t know.”
