Students' Cigarette Smoking and the Perceived Nicotine Content of Their E-cigarettes

There is concern that youth e-cigarette use may serve as a gateway to cigarette smoking, and that nicotine exposure may harm brain development. It is therefore important to know how much nonsmoking youth perceive being exposed to nicotine through e-cigarettes.

Data on smoking and vaping from the 2016 Monitoring the Future survey of eighth, tenth, and 12th grade students were analyzed in 2017. The weighted percentage distributions of self-reported e-cigarette mist last inhaled were calculated according to ever-smoking status and past 30-day smoking frequency. Chi-square tests of the association between smoking status and use of e-cigarettes perceived to contain nicotine, marijuana or hash oil, or just flavoring were performed. Never smokers and regular smokers were compared regarding the type of e-cigarette mist they believe they last used.

A significant relationship exists between smoking behavior and reportedly vaping nicotine (p<0.01) or just flavors (p<0.01). With increasing smoking intensity, an increasing proportion of students report they are vaping nicotine; a decreasing proportion report just flavors. Among 12th graders, prevalence of vaping nicotine is lowest among never smokers and non-current smokers (14.3% and 18.1%) and highest among current and frequent smokers (61.3% and 60.9%, p<0.01). Substantially larger proportions of never smokers and 30-day nonsmokers report vaping just flavors (76.0% and 69.6%) compared with regular or frequent smokers (31.0% and 29.3%, p<0.01).

Most nonsmoking students perceive limited nicotine exposure from vaping. Future research should evaluate the accuracy of self-reported e-cigarette nicotine content and monitor students who are consciously using nicotine-based e-cigarettes.