Vaping decreases because it's simply not cool anymore

Vaping and e-cigarette usage is a problem often associated with high schoolers, and that is not an ill-founded association.

In 2019, an estimated 30% of high schoolers were using e-cigarettes daily. That is around 4.5 million high schoolers a day.

In 2019, it was estimated that around 900,000 middle schoolers used e-cigarettes daily. This increased usage was on the back of increased usage every year from 2011 to 2018.

This increased usage stemmed from the ease of obtaining an e-cigarette, how easy it was to use these products discreetly, and the massive amount of nicotine in each use. In 2018, the FDA declared an epidemic in the youth population.

However, some things have changed since 2019, culminating in this AP headline: Teen vaping hits 10-year low in the US. Right now, fewer teenagers are vaping than at any point in the last decade.

Teen vaping fell to under 6% this year from 30% five years ago, and only 1.5 million students reported vaping in the previous month, which is 1/3 of the 2019 rates.

Why has this happened, and is this real data or a superficial drop?

These numbers have fallen in adolescents for a few reasons. First, the CDC and FDA have become very aggressive in enforcing their age restrictions. Both groups have specifically targeted Chinese vaping companies, who make and sell their vapes extremely cheaply, allowing poorer students to gain access to poorly made, but functional, vapes/e-cigarettes.

For example, the FDA told all major convenience stores to stop selling Elf Bar e-cigarettes, which are the most popular among teens. They are popular because they are extremely cheap, brightly colored, and because they come in flavors like watermelon ice and peach mango.

In the wake of the FDA’s letter to these stores, sales fell 36%. Elf Bar is part of the Chinese e-cigarette wave that took over the e-cigarette market after Juul’s demise, having been basically sued into oblivion.

The FDA also banned any fruit and candy flavors, which absolutely target minors, from e-cigarettes. These flavors are important because almost 90% of students who vape use flavored products.

Importantly, schools and communities saw this as a problem around a decade ago. Over the past decade, various groups in communities and schools have spent quite a bit of money to tackle youth vaping.

Schools have installed these sensors in bathrooms that detect the chemicals from e-cigarettes in the air, teachers are always stationed in and about bathrooms, and the punishments for if you are caught with a vape have become extremely severe.

From personal experience at Freedom (go Patriots), vaping is also a lot less cool than it used to be. Not that vaping was ever that “cool,” but just from my personal, high school experience, vaping is quite a bit lamer than it used to be.

I believe that one of the reasons for this drop in coolness is all the bad press vaping gets. Nationally broadcast anti-vaping ads targeting teens over YouTube and TikTok, multi-million-dollar grants for schools to combat vaping, and the increased awareness of the harmful effects that the actual chemicals in the e-cigarettes have, have all contributed to a much worse image.

Also important is momentum. The fewer kids vaping, the less it is cool, and the more those who vape are almost cast as “other.”

Now, this is not to say that vaping is not still a problem. Every day, thousands of cheap, Chinese vapes flood into this country, the vaping numbers in middle schoolers have not decreased, and there are still plenty of my classmates who ask to use the bathroom four times a period.

However, we are making stellar progress. When I was a freshman in 2021, vaping was hyper, hyper-prevalent. Smart kids, middle-class kids, poorer kids, it felt like everyone was in the bathroom vaping.

It got so bad; I remember almost all of the bathrooms were shut down for my first year. Fights were bad because hormonal teens were amped up with nicotine supercharging all their puberty tendencies, and our bathrooms looked like a bomb went off every day.

Now, not so much. Vaping is far less popular than it was, and if we keep swamping the problem with money and education, I feel certain that Freedom bathrooms will soon be palaces.

Henry Beall is a columnist for The Paper. He is a senior at Freedom High School.