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Teen Smoking in North Carolina Reaches Historic Low While E-Cig Use Increases
by Klaus Kneale
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September 22, 2014
In 2013, only about 13.5 percent of high schoolers in North Carolina were current smokers. This was down significantly from 15.5 percent only two years earlier. In the same period though, electronic cigarette use jumped from 1.7 percent to about 7.7 percent.
These are the results of recent data from the North Carolina Youth Tobacco Survey and represents a historic low for high school-level tobacco use in the state. You can read more about the survey right here.
Despite the good news about the lower smoking rate, Dr. Ruth Petersen was quick to called the increased e-cig use rate concerning. Petersen is chief of the chronic disease and injury section in the North Carolina’s Division of Public Health.
This survey, like many others, still uses a rather misleading metric for what makes a current smoker. For the purposes of the survey, a current smoker is anyone that used a cigarette within the last 30 days. And while these statistics can still be helpful, they do qualify some individuals that tried a cigarette once as current smokers even if that was the only cigarette the individual ever did or ever will try.
But the data does seem to suggest something contrary to what the researchers would like us to believe. It seems that as use of electronic cigarettes increases, use of conventional cigarettes decreases. While smoking rates in most places seem to stop declining at around 20% regardless of the efforts against smoking, the advent of electronic cigarettes appears to be making a further dent in the rate.
While health experts continue to debate the long term health effects of electronic cigarette use, few continue to argue that they may be as deadly as tobacco cigarettes. Many experts even believe that a lifetime of e-cig use will only damage an individual’s health as much as one month of smoking will. So even if teens are using e-cigs, if that habit is replacing smoking which would be occurring otherwise, it’s hard to say that’s a bad thing.
Teen Smoking in North Carolina Reaches Historic Low While E-Cig Use Increases
by Klaus Kneale
No Comments
September 22, 2014
These are the results of recent data from the North Carolina Youth Tobacco Survey and represents a historic low for high school-level tobacco use in the state. You can read more about the survey right here.
Despite the good news about the lower smoking rate, Dr. Ruth Petersen was quick to called the increased e-cig use rate concerning. Petersen is chief of the chronic disease and injury section in the North Carolina’s Division of Public Health.
But the data does seem to suggest something contrary to what the researchers would like us to believe. It seems that as use of electronic cigarettes increases, use of conventional cigarettes decreases. While smoking rates in most places seem to stop declining at around 20% regardless of the efforts against smoking, the advent of electronic cigarettes appears to be making a further dent in the rate.
While health experts continue to debate the long term health effects of electronic cigarette use, few continue to argue that they may be as deadly as tobacco cigarettes. Many experts even believe that a lifetime of e-cig use will only damage an individual’s health as much as one month of smoking will. So even if teens are using e-cigs, if that habit is replacing smoking which would be occurring otherwise, it’s hard to say that’s a bad thing.
