US: Survey Finds Rising E-Cigarette Use By Valley Youth

Source from:  Eastern Arizona Courier 01/25/2019

In the past two years, e-cigarette use has risen among Gila Valley students, while fewer youths are smoking regular cigarettes according to the 2018 Arizona Youth Survey.

Statewide, close to 20 percent of students responding to the survey reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. That rate has increased across all surveyed grade levels — 8th, 10th and 12th — since e-cigarettes were first included in the survey in 2016. This year, e-cigarettes were the second most frequently reported substance used, after alcohol.

Graham County, where 760 students across those three grades took part in the survey, was no exception. According to the survey, since 2016 more local 8th- and 12th-grade survey participants are reporting e-cigarette use in the last month. However, the numbers were slightly down among 10th-graders.

Nearly 40 percent of responding students, across all grades, said they had used e-cigarettes at least once, with 14 percent reporting use in the past 30 days.

In two years, according to survey data, recent use by 8th- grade respondents has gone up about 3 percent since 2016. Among 12th-grade respondents, there was a nearly 7 percent increase in reported e-cigarette use in the last 30 days. The survey found a slight decline in 10th-grade smokers, with 2.4 percent fewer reporting use.

Safford Unified School District Superintendent Ken VanWinkle said every district in the Valley has seen the rise in vaping. VanWinkle believed attractively named flavors and advertising were factors. “It’s scary that something can be introduced so quickly into society and have such an impact,” he said.

“I think it’s happening for a couple of reasons,” said Pima Unified School District Superintendent Sean Rickert. “The biggest one is that there are some parents who don’t think it’s a problem. We’ve received reports of parents even going so far as allowing their high-school-age children to use e-cigarettes in the home.”

He added that students were likely getting e-cigarettes from stores as well as from family members. “It’s like beer or cigarettes. I’m sure there are some retailers that will sell to people who don’t have ID or who aren’t of age.

Rickert said his district was seeing an increase in young e-cigarette smokers addicted to nicotine and had confiscated “quite a few” e-cigarettes and vaping devices in the past year. “E-cigarettes do produce higher levels of nicotine than regular cigarettes, and as a result, they’re more addictive. That’s a very powerful addiction, one that’s very difficult to break.”

Among the devices Rickert reported confiscating were several Juuls — e-cigarettes that closely resemble computer flash drives.

Rickert said that, in addition to enforcement, Pima Unified School District was putting together an educational campaign to inform students of the risks of e-cigarette smoking and provide counseling to individual students. “This is such a new phenomenon and one which has become so popular so fast that it’s forced a lot of us to try to quickly adjust,” he said.  Enditem