MAINE, USA — The Maine Center for Disease Control said the use of e-cigarettes among high school students has almost doubled since 2017, according to the results of a new survey released Friday.
The agency released its 2019 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey. The results show that 28.7% of Maine high school students report they are currently using e-cigarettes. That means they’ve used e-cigarettes at least once in the past 30 days.
The figure is an increase from 15.3% in 2017. The Maine CDC said those figures line up with recent data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, which found that 27.5% of high school students in the country reported e-cigarette use.
Maine CDC director Nirav Shah said responses to the survey also showed a decrease in the percentage of Maine students who used other forms of tobacco products.
A September state law banned e-cigarette use on school property. Shah said the state’s young people “need to realize that vaping also poses great risk to their health,” even as less of them smoke cigarettes.
