In this episode of GFN News, Zuzanna Kopacz sits down with Will Godfrey, Executive Editor of Filter, to dissect the latest findings from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). While public health agencies have long warned of a youth vaping "epidemic," the actual data reveals a startling and positive trend that many organizations seem reluctant to celebrate.
As youth smoking rates hit unprecedented lows, we ask: Why are the entities tasked with protecting public health stoking alarmism instead of acknowledging this historic decline?
Transcription:
00:00 - 00:40
[Zuzanna Kopacz]
Hello, I'm Zuzanna Kopacz and you may know me from the GFN conference and right now I want to welcome you to the GFN News on GFN TV. Today we'll be speaking with Will Godfrey of Filter about recent data on youth vaping and smoking in the United States. Hi Will, what do the latest figures show?
00:41 - 01:42
[Will Godfrey]
Hi Zuza. Yes, the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey was released in March. The numbers are once again encouraging. They're also unheralded. And that's wrong, wrote advocate Martin Cullip in a filter piece titled The Youth Smoking Collapse Nobody Wants to Talk About. Among US high school students, use of safer products continued to decline, while cigarette smoking remained at a record low. Just 2% regularly vape, 0.4% regularly use nicotine pouches, and a tiny 0.2% regularly smoke. No major press release accompanied these findings. Compare that lack of fanfare to the years when US youth vaping, which peaked in 2019, was on the rise, Martin wrote. The outcry then was relentless, even though youth smoking, the real health threat, not only continued to decline during this period, but was found by some researchers to be declining faster than before.
01:43 - 01:46
[Zuzanna Kopacz]
And why do you think these findings haven't been amplified?
01:47 - 02:16
[Will Godfrey]
There's certainly turmoil and cuts under the Trump administration at the FDA and CDC, the agencies that produce the survey, but there's also no doubt that the data contradict the politicized narrative that led to a moral panic about youth vaping and all manner of crackdowns. When the CDC, for instance, continues to warn on its website that youth who vape may also be more likely to smoke cigarettes in the future, the truth can be inconvenient.
02:17 - 02:20
[Zuzanna Kopacz]
What are the real implications of the findings?
02:22 - 03:35
[Will Godfrey]
It's another telling blow against the widespread theory promulgated by public health and tobacco control entities that vapes are a so-called gateway to smoking for youth. The gap between the claim and the observable reality keeps growing wider, as Martin observed. What researchers identify as common liability to use all nicotine products is a far more likely explanation for any correlation. If vaping were truly acting as a gateway into smoking, Martin wrote, we would expect youth smoking rates to rise as vaping becomes more common. Instead, the opposite has happened. In the United States, youth smoking has fallen to historically unprecedented levels during the same period that vaping emerged. The latest data extend a pattern that has been visible for more than a decade. Many tobacco control entities have been weirdly quiet about the hugely positive long-term decline in youth smoking. They've preferred instead to stoke alarmism about vaping in an apparent bid for eyeballs and relevance. If youth vaping continues on its established trajectory, it'll only get harder for them to do that.
03:37 - 03:54
[Zuzanna Kopacz]
Thank you, Will. That's all for today. Tune in next time here on GFN TV or on our podcast and make sure to check out our social media pages for the latest updates on this year's Global Forum on Nicotine conference. Thank you for watching or listening and see you next time.