According to a new study, more teenagers are vaping marijuana even though a mysterious lung illness has sickened hundreds and killed many others.
According to the National Institutes of Health’s Monitoring the Future survey, 14% of 12th graders said they had vaped marijuana in the previous month. Roughly 26% of seniors said they had vaped nicotine within the past month.
The study, which was released on Wednesday, has found that this is nearly double the rate from last year. It is the second-largest annual increase recorded in the survey’s 45-year history. It’s also up dramatically from 4.9% in 2017.
The survey of more than 42,000 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 was conducted by Richard Miech and colleagues at the University of Michigan.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention had released results of a separate survey earlier this year which found that roughly 26% of high school seniors had said they vaped nicotine within the previous month.
“We’ve seen [increases] in the past among the three grades, never at this size that we’re observing with vaping,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She added, “Never.”
“Teenagers are believing less and less there’s any harm in marijuana, and then on top of that you have sleek, cool devices that actually have become very, very popular among teenagers,” Volkow said.
A mysterious lung illness linked to vaping has hospitalized 2,409 people across the country and killed 52, the CDC said last week.
