Vaping is soaring
Pick your poison, the saying goes. Increasingly it appears that the poison of choice for U.S. teens is vaped nicotine.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse released a survey this week that showed vaping by high school seniors had nearly doubled in just a year — from 11 percent who said in 2017 that they had vaped in the past 30 days versus nearly 21 percent who answered the same this year.
Meanwhile, according to the survey, the use of other illicit drugs by teens was flat or declined, including their use of alcohol.
Although the shift away from alcohol and hard drugs is good, getting hooked on nicotine is terrible, even when the nicotine is delivered in a form other than cancer-causing cigarettes.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed new restrictions to try to more effectively keep e-cigarettes and similar nicotine-delivery devices out of the hands of minors. This survey underlines why such restrictions are needed, and fast.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
