13% of Americans Have Tried E-Cigarettes

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that 12.6% of USA adults have tried an e-cigarette at least once, and 3.7% use them on a regular basis.

Teens may prefer electronic cigarettes to regular cigarettes, but the same is not in the case of their parents.

Federal survey data collected in 2014 suggest that older adults have had relatively little interest in e-cigarettes, with individuals younger than 25 being the primary experimenters and regular users. Among those who recently quit smoking, more than 55% said they had tried the devices.

“What we’re seeing is that people are using e-cigarettes and smoking traditional cigarettes”, says Erika Sward, assistant vice president for national advocacy at the American Lung Association.

It isn’t hard to see why it is disconcerting: young people between 18 and 24 years of age that have never smoked before, have started using e-cigarettes in the past year. However, there are a number of adults who already smoke and have now shifted to e-cigarettes to wean themselves off normal cigarettes.

In contrast, only 9% of longtime former smokers had tried electronic cigarettes, and 2.3% still used them.

The new data also reveal that younger adults were more likely to have tried e-cigarettes than older ones. Among those still using the devices when surveyed, almost 16% said they were still smoking tobacco cigarettes, Schoenborn says, while 22% had recently quit.

It was also found that 13 percent of middle school and high school students have experimented with electronic cigarettes or tried them at least once. But health officials have expressed concern that e-cigarettes could create a new generation of nicotine addicts. The highest rate of e-cigarette experimentation – 22 percent – was seen among people between the ages of 18 and 24.

Of all adults surveyed, about 14% of men and 11% of women said they had tried the devices.

The researchers found that overall, the percentage of people who had never smoked regular cigarettes but had tried e-cigarettes was 3.2%.

White adults (15 percent) were more likely to have vaped at least once than were Latinos (9 percent), blacks (7 percent) or Asian Americans (6 percent).

“The use by young adult never-smokers, I think, certainly is noteworthy”, Schoenborn says. However, the highest rate of experimentation (20 percent) was among the group labeled American Indians and Alaska Natives.

E-cigarettes work by heating up a fluid that contains the drug nicotine, producing a vapor that users inhale.

“Nicotine exposure at a young age may cause lasting harm to brain development, promote addiction, and lead to sustained tobacco use”, Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, director of the CDC, said in a statement in April.

The data were gathered as part of the National Health Interview Survey, an ongoing survey of a variety of health issues.