Joint smoking-vaping prevalence rates among American youth and young adults 2011-2022.

Abstract

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) annually tracks American youth and adult smoking prevalence using data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The NYTS and the NHIS began collecting information on vaping in 2011 and 2014 respectively. However, since those years the CDC has only reported smoking and vaping rates separately, which presents a long-term and important information gap, given the decade-long debate about whether e-cigarettes help people who smoke reduce or quit, and whether they are a gateway to youth smoking. This short report provides joint smoking and vaping prevalence rates for American high school students from 2011 to 2022 from the NYTS, and rates for American adults 18-44 years old over the same period from the NHIS. The results show that cigarette smoking declined sharply, especially in high schoolers and emerging young adults (18-20 years) while vaping increased substantially. In addition, the prevalence of vaping among people who formerly smoked also increased. The importance of these trends is highlighted by sharp increases in quit ratios among emerging and junior (21-24 years) young adults, who had historically low levels of quitting.