A promising decline in teen smoking

From: The Washington Post | Editorial

AMID THE nationwide furor over the Senate draft health-care bill, a public-health victory has gone mostly unnoticed. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the estimated number of middle and high school students who are tobacco users dropped from 4.7 million in 2015 to 3.9 million in 2016. This was largely driven by a reduction in the number of teenagers using e-cigarettes, which are less harmful than regular cigarettes but still contain nicotine. The downturn is a success for advocates and officials who have worked to curb teen tobacco use — but it should not be heralded as the end of the road.

Teenage smoking has long been one of the most serious public-health issues. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and 9 in 10 American smokers had their first taste of tobacco before the age of 18. Although policies to curb teen smoking showed signs of success for a time, youth tobacco rates remained stagnant between 2011 and 2015. During this period, the use of e-cigarettes among high school students increased by a staggering 900 percent.

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