From 2018 to 2020, E-Cigarette Use in U.S. Adults Down Slightly

MONDAY, July 25, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- From 2018 to 2020, there was a slight decrease in electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, especially among young adults aged 18 to 20 years, while daily e-cigarette use increased during the same period, according to a study published online July 22 in JAMA Network Open.

Ellen Boakye, M.D., M.P.H., from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues conducted a repeated cross-sectional study using data from the 2017, 2018, and 2020 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System involving 994,307 adults aged 18 years and older to examine recent patterns in current and daily e-cigarette use.

The researchers found the prevalence of current e-cigarette use was 4.4, 5.5, and 5.1 percent in 2017, 2018, and 2020, respectively. The recent decrease was mainly seen for young adults aged 18 to 20 years (from 18.9 to 15.6 percent). However, there was a consistent increase seen in the prevalence of daily e-cigarette use from 1.5 to 2.1 and 2.3 percent in 2017 to 2018 and 2020, respectively. Among young adults aged 21 to 24 years, a slight, but insignificant, increase was seen in the prevalence of current e-cigarette use (from 13.5 to 14.5 percent), while the prevalence of daily e-cigarette use increased significantly from 4.4 to 6.6 percent between 2018 and 2020.

"Notably, the proportion of e-cigarette users who reported daily e-cigarette use increased significantly between 2017 and 2020, which was likely reflective of overall patterns of greater nicotine dependence among those who used e-cigarettes," the authors write.

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