Since 1975, The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has conducted an annual study monitoring the usage of drugs among teens. Fortunately in 2014, a decrease was seen in prescription drugs, opiod and alcohol use. There was also a decrease in traditional cigarette smoking and a rise in vapor cigarette usage, or e-smoking.
This was actually the first year that vapor cigarettes were included in the study and many believe the decrease in other drugs is due to the rise of e-cig usage. The survey included 41,000 students at 377 different public and private middle and high schools.
There continues to be disagreements as to whether or not vapor cigarettes are safer than traditional smoking. However, it has been proven that traditional smoking is no doubt bad for your health. You can read more on this in our knowledge center article titled 5 Ways Smoking Damages Your Body.
Many believe that teens have quit traditional smoking to switch to the better alternative of vaporcigarettes. Some argue however, teens that never would have smoked have taken up vaping and would not have otherwise.
The NIDA Deputy Director, Wilson Compton, states that “About 8% overall of 8th graders report use of these electronic cigarettes over the past month. About half of those had never used another kind of cigarette before. So this is perhaps a concerning exposure to nicotine at quite a young age.”
As far as the high school, 16% of 10th graders and 17% of 12th graders have used vapor cigarettes within the past month. Those percentages are higher than the rate of traditional smoking in the past years.
At Eversmoke, we do not promote e-smoking among teens and only sell our products to adults. We do believe our product is a better alternative over traditional smoking. E-smoking is on the rise all around and so much so that it was selected as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.
We invite you to continue browsing our e-smoking blog and knowledge center to learn more about vapor cigarettes, or check out our e-smoking and traditional smoking comparison for some other interesting facts.