June 29, 2017 – Vaping Decline

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Anchor lead: Fewer teenagers are smoking and vaping, Elizabeth Tracey reports

There’s been a big decline in the number of US teenagers smoking cigarettes and vaping, the latest CDC data show. Mike Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, applauds public health workers who’ve helped.

Klag: It’s a great public health success story. US teens are smoking less, they’re vaping less. So this was data from the CDC 2016. What they found is that e-cigarette use among middle and high school students fell from 3 million students in 2015 to just under 2.2 in 2016. About 11% of high school students used e-cigarettes in the last 30 days in 2016, down from 16% in 2015.  :26

Klag says one factor that has discouraged teens from picking up the habit of smoking or vaping is cost, with the average national annual cost of smoking traditional cigarettes at about $2600, and of vaping about $1500. Other strategies known to be effective include prohibitions on smoking or vaping on or around school grounds and other public places. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.