Teen use of e-cigarettes grows
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: There’s one bit of good news in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest survey on teenage smoking — only 9.2 percent of teens in 2014 said they smoke cigarettes. That’s a sharp drop from 12.7 percent of the year before, the biggest one-year decline in more than a decade.
But that positive news was offset by the tripling of teens who said they use electronic cigarettes — a smokeless, tobacco-less alternative that contains nicotine, which is addictive. According to the CDC, 2 million high school students, or 13.4 percent, said they used e-cigarettes last year, compared with only 4.5 percent the year before. In 2014, 450,000 middle school students, or 3.9 percent, used e-cigarettes — a jump from 1.1 percent in 2013.
The CDC considers it a worrisome trend because of the possibility that young people could migrate to tobacco eventually if hooked on nicotine.
Although the Food and Drug Administration regulates cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco, it has no authority over e-cigarettes. It may issue a rule in June, though, giving itself the power. For the sake of healthy Americans, young and old, it won’t come a day too soon.