Cigarette smoking rates have been fairly steady. Most health experts blame vaping as one of the main reasons.
Cigarette smoking can cause a lot of health problems, which includes cancer, cardiovascular diseases, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), stroke, cataracts, and aortic aneurysm.
Given this reason, the U.S. government has crossed mountains in keeping their youths away from this poison as much as possible.
Through the years, the efforts of the government were never been in vain as the rates of those who use these nicotine sticks have declined. Unfortunately, health officials notice something has changed just recently.
Based on the research, which results have been released Monday, over the past three years, cigarette smoking rates have stopped declining. This study involves observing the data of around 20,000 middle and high school students, as reported by the Seattle Times.
"We were making progress, and now you have the introduction of a product that is heavily popular among youth that has completely erased that progress," Brian King of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Though there could be a lot of factors that contribute to this alarming situation, experts say there could only be one main reason that caused this to happen. Most health experts blame the sudden change to the increase of vape-smoking rates among youths.
Vapes are electronic cigarettes or an electronic vaporizers people use nowadays instead of the typical cigarette. These have increased in demand since people thought this could give off lesser negative effect as compared to the latter.
The usage of these e-cigarettes have been fairly helpful especially to adults who are already getting dependent on nicotine, but the situation is different when it comes to the kids and teens.
As the data shows, health experts say e-cigarettes only cause young people to get more attracted to use traditional cigarettes instead of the other way around.
"I think the writing is on the wall," using vapes are pathways that lead the youth to try out regular cigarettes, Megan Roberts, an Ohio State University researcher, further explains.
However, other data confirms how e-cigarette had also helped decrease teen smoking several years ago. With this, some experts are still unsure of how vaping can be blamed to the present situation of youth's cigarette smoking rates, according to Time.
David Levy, a Georgetown University researcher, emphasized how it is still not safe to jump to conclusions as of yet and further investigation must be done by saying, "It's not clear yet what's going on, and it's best to not jump to any conclusions."
