Over the last five years adolescent use of e-cigarettes, also known as vaping, has risen rapidly. The 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey found that 2.5 million high school and 380,000 middle school students in the United States currently vape. This is concerning because vaping in young people is associated with several harms. For example, vaping in adolescence is associated with nicotine addiction and starting to smoke combustible cigarettes later in life. There is also the risk of acute illness, such as e-cigarette, or vaping, product-use associated lung injury (EVALI), a disease that first garnered public attention in summer of 2019. By February 2020, more than 2,700 cases requiring hospitalization of EVALI had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with over 75% of these patients under 35. In mid-January 2020, the CDC reported a link between vaping THC containing devices and EVALI, but noted that 14% of cases were in patients who exclusively used nicotine containing products.
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