Research made by the CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) shows that e-cigarette use has been stabilized amongst adults and most of them are ex-smokers. According to surveys made in 2018 show, 3,2% of adults were vaping regularly and this is the same percentage that was recorded in 2016, this was reported by Maria Villarroel and her colleagues form NCHS.
In addition to this information, 14,9% of respondents reported having ever tried an e-cigarette in 2018 versus 13.9% in 2014 and 15.3% in 2016, were written in an NCHS Data Brief.
Furthermore, it was reported that adults that quitted smoking mostly tend to use e-cigarettes. This shows that most people use e-cigarettes to quit smoking. Even more, information from the latest data on vaping from the National Health Interview Survey shows that e-cigarette are most common amongst smokers who have recently quit, and also among current smokers.
Deputy director for policy for the anti-tobacco group Action of Smoking and Health (ASH) Chris Bostic states that;
“The ideal policy would be to find a way to give smokers ready access to these products with children having no access,” Bostic said. “But we’ve seen that this is hard. If e-cigarettes are on the market, kids are going to find them.”
As teen vaping increased, teen smoking rates decreased
According to the CDC, between 2018 and 2019 alone, e-cigarette use among middle-school and high-school students increased by 1.8 million, from 3.6 million to 5.4 million. However, many public health experts argue that these figures are being taken out of context. In fact, a recent study published in Pediatrics has indicated that as e-cigarette use increased between 2011 and 2018, teen cigarette smokers smoked fewer cigarettes per day and on fewer days.
All of this information points out to one specific thing. That is that e-cigarettes are something that people tend to use when they quit smoking. Some groups believe that banning vaping will be increasing the number of smokers which is worse than anything else. Furthermore, it is added that most e-cigarette users never go back to smoking.