A new analysis on substance abuse suggests that many people who became addicted to vaping in their teens haven't quit.
Want to get caught up on what's happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
While vaping rates for young adults have increased, use among high schoolers and minors has dropped significantly, NPR reported.
Nationally, vaping rates among adults aged 18 to 24 went from 7.6% in 2018 to 11% in 2021, the latest year with data available. Meantime, vaping rates among high schoolers dropped from 28% in 2019 to 12.6% in 2023, according to the report.
"What vaping has done, getting high schoolers, in some cases even middle schoolers, hooked on vaping, is now playing out," Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told NPR. "They're still hooked. This is a very addictive product."
Studies show teen vaping spiked during the COIVD-19 pandemic and many users developed nicotine dependence symptoms as they turned to vaping to relax, get high and deal with boredom while coping with pandemic-related stressors. And the vapes they were using were packed with high levels of nicotine. Using nicotine in adolescence can harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood and impulse control, according to the CDC.
"The products they were using had five times more nicotine than previous vapes had," Chris Lord, associate director of the Collegiate Recovery Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, told NPR. "So getting hooked on that was... almost impossible to avoid."
Several studies have shown that young people who vape want to quit, citing health concerns, cost, the desire to be free from addiction and social factors as motivation for doing so -- and many have tried, but for most it's just too hard to overcome the intense psychological craving and shake the habit.
"Everyone knows it's not good for you and everyone wants to stop," Jacob Garza, a senior at the University of Colorado who works to raise awareness about substance use as part of the school's Health Promotion program, told NPR. "But at this point, doing it all these years... it's just second nature now. They're hooked on it."
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok