US lawmakers are still unable to obtain actual numbers of youth e-cigarette use in each state as they plan to introduce various e-cigarette legislation. This is because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US continues to delay the release of the results of its 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
Every year, public schools participate in the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS), which surveys various behaviors of teenagers, including substance use patterns. The survey aims to help lawmakers understand any policies they may be considering. In recent years, the results have been announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the summer of the following year. For example, in the middle of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 YRBS results were released in August.
As of early December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States had not released the results of the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. This is odd, considering that some states, including Montana, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, have already released their own YRBS results, according to the article.
Given that the CDC has received a significant amount of funding from Bloomberg, this delay is questionable. What's even more peculiar is that since 2019, billionaire opponent of e-cigarettes Michael Bloomberg has donated $10.5 million to the CDC Foundation for "monitoring youth e-cigarette use," including adding more nuanced metrics to national e-cigarette youth surveillance systems, such as YRBS. One might assume that with the influx of funding, the agency would be able to release this information in a timely manner.
The article highlights that some issues previously identified in the investigation have been removed. However, it is not just delays that have occurred, but also omissions of issues. According to the results published by various states for the 2021 YRBS, issues related to teenage use of e-cigarettes have been omitted. Let's consider the 2019 Montana YRBS. In that survey, students were asked "what their main reasons for using e-cigarette products were". A list of options was provided, including because friends and family had used them, because they were less harmful or cheaper than cigarettes, because of flavor, and "other".
This issue has led to only 7% of high school students reporting that they use e-cigarettes due to flavor, which is too low of a number for those who are eager to ban flavors. Fast forward to the 2021 YRBS, the question has shifted from why they use e-cigarettes to what flavors they use, thus alleviating the low percentage of e-cigarettes being used for flavor.
At the same time, research conducted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) showed a one-third decrease in the number of adolescents using e-cigarettes.
A school-based survey conducted from January 16 to March 16 revealed that 19.6% of high school students (30.2 million) reported using electronic cigarettes, a decrease from 27.5% (41.1 million) in 2019. The figure also declined among middle school students, from 10.5% (12.4 million) in 2019 to 4.7% (5.5 million).
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