Around 9.3% of US middle and high school students reported current tobacco use in 2021.
Findings from the 2021 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) released by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that approximately 2.55 million students (grades 6-12), or 9.3%, reported current (past 30-day) use of a tobacco products. Of this number, 2.06 million (13.4%) were high school (grades 9-12) students and 470,000 (4.0%) were middle school students (grades 6-8).
NYTS asked students about their use of nine types of tobacco products. E-cigarettes were the most commonly currently used tobacco product, cited by 2.06 million (7.6%) middle and high school students, followed by cigarettes (410,000; 1.5%), cigars (380,000; 1.4%), smokeless tobacco (240,000; 0.9%), hookahs (220,000; 0.8%), and nicotine pouches (200,000; 0.8%). This was the first time that NYTS collected data on use of nicotine pouches.
Tobacco product use was higher among certain subpopulations. For example, current use of any tobacco product was reported by 14.2% of students identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (versus 7.9% of heterosexual) and 18.9% of students identifying as transgender (versus 8.2% of not transgender).
Also, current use of any tobacco product use was reported by 14.2% of students reporting severe psychological distress (versus 5.5% with no distress).
Notably, almost two-thirds (65.3%) of students who currently used any tobacco product reported seriously thinking about quitting the use of all products, and 60.2% had stopped using all products for ≥1 days because they were trying to quit during the past 12 months.