NAQC Newsroom: Research

Longitudinal Trends in E-cigarette Devices Used by Californian Youth, 2014-2018.

Friday, May 15, 2020  
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Lin C, Baiocchi M, Halpern-Felsher B.
Longitudinal Trends in E-cigarette Devices Used by Californian Youth, 2014-2018.
Addict Behav. 2020 Apr 29;108:106459. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106459. [Epub ahead of print]

The rate of adolescent and young adult (AYA) e-cigarette usage has increased in recent years, possibly due to the introduction of sleek new e-cigarette devices such as JUUL. This study analyzed data from 400 California AYA to examine trends in e-cigarette usage by device type (disposables, large-size rechargeables, vape/hookah pens, JUUL/pod-based). Participants were asked about their ever, past 30-day, and past 7-day use of e-cigarettes; their usual e-cigarette device used; and co-use of devices in seven surveys administered approximately biannually from 2014 to 2018. During this time period, total e-cigarette ever-usage in our cohort increased linearly from 14.1% to 46.2% (ptrend < 0.001). JUUL/pod-based e-cigarette ever-usage increased from 14.9% to 22.5% in just six months in 2018. Furthermore, a majority of new e-cigarette users at the time of the survey endorsed using JUUL/pod-based devices (58.3% in Wave 6, 73.0% in Wave 7). With newer device options, AYA were also increasingly less likely to endorse older models such as disposables (19.1% to 6.9% from 2014 to 2018, ptrend < 0.01) and rechargeables (69.1% to 26.2% from 2014 to 2018, ptrend < 0.001) as their usual e-cigarette device. Participants who used JUUL/pod-based only as their usual device were more likely to endorse using only JUUL/pod-based devices during follow-up survey (70%), and none switched to a new device completely. Overall, this study provides a snapshot of how AYA's e-cigarette preferences appear to respond to new devices entering the market.