--- title: CDC: Teen Smoking Rate Lowest in 22 Years description: Cigarette smoking among high school students has dropped to lowest level in two decades canonical: https://time.com/2864214/teen-smoking-is-way-down-but-what-about-e-cigs/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-12T17:00:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:08:16.945Z article:section: Health og:title: Teen smoking rate drops to lowest level in 22 years og:description: Cigarette smoking among high school students has dropped to lowest level in two decades og:url: https://time.com/2864214/teen-smoking-is-way-down-but-what-about-e-cigs/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Teen smoking rate drops to lowest level in 22 years twitter:description: Cigarette smoking among high school students has dropped to lowest level in two decades twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Teen Smoking Is Way Down. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jun 12, 2014 5:00 PM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jun 12, 2014 5:00 PM UTC Rates of cigarette smoking among high school students has dropped to lowest level in 22 years, the CDC reports. In 2013, the smoking rate among high school students hit 15.7%, which means the U.S. government has already reached its goal of lowing the teen smoking rate to 16% of less by 2020\. That’s according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), which began in 1991\. Another important data set on teen smoking and drug use—[Monitoring the Future](http://monitoringthefuture.org/) (MTF)—reports the rate is at 16.3%. Regardless, both surveys show fewer kids are smoking. That’s good news, and it’s likely thanks to a combination of several factors, the most important being the rising costs of cigarettes. Others include the growing stigmatization of smoking, with half of states prohibiting smoking in places like bars and restaurants. The adult smoking rate is dropping too, which means teens have fewer smoking role models. If teens are passing around fewer packs of cigarettes, does that mean they’re not smoking other things? Past [data](http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/02/cigarette-smokers-switch-to-cheaper-cigars-and-pipes/) has shown a 123% increase in the consumption of other smokable tobacco products like cigars and pipes, though the recent numbers from the larger data sets show no change in smokeless tobacco use since 1999, and a drop in cigar use.  CDC One question you’re likely going to see is whether teens are switching to e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes is a subject the public health community is uncharacteristically split on. On one side of the spectrum, you have critics arguing that it’s possible e-cigarettes serve as a gateway to regular cigarettes. One vocal critic being the head of the CDC himself. “The increased use of e-cigarettes by teens is deeply troubling,” said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden in a statement about teen tobacco use going down. “Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Many teens who start with e-cigarettes may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and conventional cigarettes.” Emerging data points to certain trends, but e-cigs are still so new. Earlier this fall, a CDC [report](http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/05/e-cigarettes-finding-new-users-in-teens/) showed that e-cig use among teens, while still low, had doubled in a year, from 3.3% in 2011 to 6.8% in 2012. Dr. Kenneth Warner, a professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, looked back through the data and found that among kids who have never smoked a conventional cigarette, only 0.7% have ever tried an e-cigarette within the last 30 days. What this shows is that the same kids who are smoking regular cigarettes are smoking e-cigs. “Everyone thinks they are right and the logical thing is that nobody knows,” says Warner. “This is a huge-stakes issue, because the proliferation of e-cigs has the potential to either reduce the cigarette problem or increase it over time among kids.” The reality is we have a long way to go. It took 40 years to get the adult smoking rate down to around 20%, and it won’t be easy to cut it in half again. Warner and his colleague David Mendez have created a smoking-prevalence model that’s been used since the 1990s. Their predictions show that at the rate we are going, we might not be able to hit a 10% adult smoking rate until the middle of the century. But that’s if we don’t try anything radically different. “I believe we will do better because I don’t think we’ll stick with just status quo tobacco control,” says Warner. “In my judgment, the future lies in how effectively FDA can regulate cigarettes and other \[nicotine\] products.” The FDA announced it is [expanding its regulatory powers](http://time.com/75312/fda-e-cigarettes/) to cover more tobacco products including e-cigs, but anti-smoking advocates are arguing it’s [still not enough](http://time.com/2857718/industry-is-winning-the-e-cig-regulation-battle/). “The data on kids is great, but we have a long way to go before we can pack up and go home and say we solved the problem,” says Warner. You can read more on the latest CDC numbers [here](http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0905-ecigarette-use.html). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2864214/teen-smoking-is-way-down-but-what-about-e-cigs/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2864214/teen-smoking-is-way-down-but-what-about-e-cigs/"},"headline":"Teen Smoking Is Way Down. 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