A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the use of electronic cigarettes growing among young people, hitting 3 million users.
The number of middle and high school students who used e-cigarettes rose from 2.46 million in 2014 to 3 million in 2015, making it the most commonly used tobacco product, according to the CDC’s 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey released Thursday.
“No form of youth tobacco use is safe,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement. “Nicotine is an addictive drug and use during adolescence may cause lasting harm to brain development.”
{mosads}The report found that students are generally using tobacco products at the same rate they were in 2011. The survey showed that 4.7 million middle and high school students are currently using a tobacco product and more than 2.3 million of those students were using two or more tobacco products.
Health officials are concerned the numbers have not fallen in recent years.
“We’re very concerned that one in four high school students use tobacco, and that almost half of those use more than one product,” Corinne Graffunder, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, said in a statement. “We know about 90 percent of all adult smokers first try cigarettes as teens. Fully implementing proven tobacco control strategies could prevent another generation of Americans from suffering from tobacco-related diseases and premature deaths.”
While there was a significant decrease from 2011 to 2015 in youth smoking, CDC said there was no significant change in cigarette smoking from 2014 to 2015.
The survey comes as industry and health groups are pushing the Food and Drug Administration to finalize its long awaited rule to regulate for the first time all tobacco products, including cigars and e-cigarettes.