- Current vape use among US middle and high school students fell from about 20 per cent in 2019 to 5.2 per cent in 2025, a decline of roughly 74 per cent.
- Cigarette smoking stood at 1.4 per cent, while 7.2 per cent reported using any product classified by US authorities as a tobacco product.
- Among students currently vaping, 41.2 per cent had used a vape on at least 20 of the previous 30 days and 27.5 per cent used one daily.
- A longitudinal study co-authored by Dr Arielle Selya found that 52 per cent of young people who had tried vaping around the 2019 peak had stopped by the follow-up.
The proportion of US middle and high school students currently vaping has fallen by almost three quarters since its 2019 peak, while cigarette smoking has declined to 1.4 per cent, according to the latest federal data.
Behavioural scientist Dr Arielle Selya says the results challenge continued claims of a “youth vaping epidemic”, arguing that some accounts omit the steep decline and fail to distinguish occasional experimentation from sustained use.
Vaping rate falls from about 20 per cent to 5.2 per cent
Selya set out her argument in an analysis on the Selya Behavioral Science Substack, based on a presentation to the 2026 Global Forum on Nicotine session “Debunking the Science Used to Support Prohibition”.
The 2025 National Youth Tobacco Survey questioned 23,630 students in grades six to 12. It defined “current use” as using a product on at least one day during the previous 30 days.
The survey found that 5.2 per cent of students, an estimated 1.44 million, currently used vapes. That compares with a combined middle and high school prevalence of about 20 per cent at the 2019 peak.
The fall represents a decline of roughly 74 per cent. The FDA said youth tobacco use had reached historic lows, with current use of tobacco products overall, vapes and cigarettes all declining between 2022 and 2025.
Overall, 7.2 per cent of students, or 2.01 million, reported current use of at least one product counted by the FDA as a tobacco product. This included 5.2 per cent using vapes, 1.7 per cent using nicotine pouches and 1.4 per cent smoking cigarettes.
Selya wrote: “‘Youth vaping epidemic’ claims are misleading and do not stand up to wider evidence.”
She argues that some publications and campaigns continue to rely on the 2019 peak without acknowledging the subsequent decline or the historically low level of cigarette smoking.
The figures nevertheless show that a substantial minority of current users vape frequently. Among students who currently used vapes, 41.2 per cent had vaped on at least 20 of the previous 30 days and 27.5 per cent used them daily.
Two-thirds used disposable devices, while 89.4 per cent reported using flavoured products. The most commonly reported brands were Geek Bar, Elf Bar, Lost Mary, Raz and Vuse.
The FDA said the declines should be considered alongside the approximately two million students who still used tobacco or nicotine products. It maintains that any youth use remains a concern and has called for continued prevention, enforcement and monitoring.
Past-month use covers one-off and daily vaping
A central part of Selya’s argument concerns the way youth vaping is measured.
The standard “current use” measure includes any use during the previous 30 days. It can therefore cover behaviour ranging from trying another student’s vape once to using a vape every day.
Most national surveillance surveys are also repeated cross-sectional studies. They question a new representative sample each year, rather than following the same young people over time. This means annual prevalence figures cannot show how many individuals continue, reduce or stop vaping.
Stronger evidence about persistence comes from a study by Selya and fellow Pinney Associates researcher Sooyong Kim, using longitudinal data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study.
The researchers followed young people who had not used vapes at the first survey wave in approximately 2018, before the peak in US youth vaping.
By the next wave, around 2019, 21.2 per cent had tried a vape, 10.9 per cent had used one during the previous month and 5.6 per cent reported ever having used one regularly.
At the follow-up around 2021, 52 per cent of those who had tried vaping had discontinued. Selya’s analysis says approximately 60 per cent had moved to a lower level of use, while 17 per cent escalated and five per cent continued at a high level. Cigarette smoking at the earlier survey was associated with greater odds of continued vaping.
Selya wrote: “In an ideal world, youth would not use nicotine, but a mitigating factor is that most use is experimental and transient.”
The results do not mean that all youth vaping is brief or harmless. They do suggest that past-month prevalence alone provides an incomplete picture of how frequently young people vape and whether their use persists.
Smoking fell far below earlier targets
Selya also places the vaping figures alongside longer-term trends in youth cigarette smoking.
Monitoring the Future data cited in her analysis show that past-month cigarette smoking across eighth, tenth and twelfth grades averaged 28.3 per cent around its 1997 peak. It stood at 22.6 per cent in 2000 and 12.8 per cent in 2010.
Separate Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, which cover high school students, show how far smoking subsequently fell compared with official expectations.
When the Healthy People 2020 objectives were established, 19.5 per cent of high school students reported smoking during the previous month. The target was to reduce the figure to 16 per cent by 2020.
Instead, high-school smoking fell to six per cent in 2019 and 3.5 per cent in 2023, according to the figures cited by Selya. The original 16 per cent target is confirmed in federal records.
Selya interprets the unexpectedly large decline as evidence that the rise of vaping did not reverse progress against youth smoking. She argues that the combined trends are consistent with some young people choosing vapes in circumstances where earlier generations might have smoked.
The timing cannot establish that vaping caused the decline. Tobacco-control policies, education campaigns, prices, enforcement, changing attitudes and wider social factors may all have contributed. The FDA has, for example, reported evidence that its Real Cost campaign prevented hundreds of thousands of young people from beginning to vape.
Population trends also cannot show what individual young people would have done had vapes never become available.
They do show, however, that US youth vaping has fallen substantially since 2019, while cigarette smoking has reached historically low levels. Selya argues that descriptions of an ongoing epidemic should acknowledge those developments and distinguish occasional use from the smaller group of young people who vape frequently or persistently.
Arielle Selya is an employee of Pinney associates which consults to Juul Labs on tobacco harm reduction. She also serves as a scientific advisor to the Global Forum on Nicotine. Her opinions here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of her clients or employers.
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