# Wisconsin Teen Smoking Rate Plummets...



## Alex (30/11/14)

*Wisconsin Teen Smoking Rate Plummets Just as E-Cig Use Enters the Picture*
by Klaus Kneale No Comments
November 30, 2014




If that headline sounds familiar, it’s because we ran one eerily similar within the last month, but set in Minnesota. Now a new bit of research in Wisconsin is showing that this trend may be common to e-cigs and smoking in more than just a few select environments.

According to the Wisconsin Youth Tobacco Survey, the smoking rate among Wisconsin high school students has dropped from 13.1 percent in 2012 to 10.7 percent. That’s well below the national average of 12.7 percent. Anti-tobacco campaigners are quick to take credit for such a decline, but yet again, it seems to be happening in tandem with increases in electronic cigarette use by the same group.

The same study found that around 8% of students were using electronic cigarettes — well above the presumed national average of around 4-5%. And while, yet again, anti-tobacco nuts are claiming this is a bad thing, the numbers are suggesting that e-cigs may be helping with the decline of smoking among teens.

You can read more on the report here.




Some are treating news of increasing e-cig use among teens as a 100% negative — arguing that tobacco companies have just found a different way to ensnare and ultimately kill their customers. However, many public health experts are beginning to see e-cigs as the silver bullet that may eventually end tobacco.

While a perfect world may be one in which teens use nothing we might disapprove of, that’s certainly never going to be the reality. In a realistic (and reasonably free) world, the best we can hope for is that teens use something that doesn’t impact their long-term health and isn’t nearly impossible to quit when and if they eventually decide to do so. In both of these instances, electronic cigarettes appear to succeed. Studies continue to prove e-cigs are about 99% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes (despite misleading evidence to the contrary), and preliminary evidence suggests that nicotine is not nearly has addictive with consumed without smoke.

If e-cigs continue to obsolete tobacco cigarettes, we may actually see a smoke-free world in our lifetime.

source: available here

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