TUESDAY, Feb. 12, 2019 (HealthDay News) -- From 2017 to 2018, there was an increase in any tobacco use, especially electronic cigarette use, for high school and middle school students, according to research published online Feb. 11 in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Andrea S. Gentzke, Ph.D., from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues analyzed data from the 2011 to 2018 National Youth Tobacco Surveys to estimate tobacco product use among U.S. middle and high school students.
The researchers found that current use of any tobacco product was reported by 27.1 and 7.2 percent of high school and middle school students, respectively, in 2018 (4.04 million and 840,000, respectively). Among high school and middle school students, the most commonly used product was e-cigarettes (20.8 and 4.9 percent, respectively). There was no significant change in use of any tobacco product overall during 2011 to 2018 among either school level. Current use of any tobacco product increased 38.3 percent among high school students (19.6 to 27.1 percent) and 28.6 percent among middle school students (5.6 to 7.2 percent) from 2017 to 2018; e-cigarette use increased 77.8 percent (from 11.7 to 20.8 percent) and 48.5 percent (from 3.3 to 4.9 percent) among high school and middle school students, respectively.
"The recent changes in patterns of use of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products during 2017 to 2018 erased the decline in any tobacco product use that occurred in previous years," the authors write.
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