These findings come from the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, which tracks trends in substance use among students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades.
Each year the national study, now in its 40th year, surveys 40,000 to 50,000 students in about 400 secondary schools throughout the United States.
"As one of the newest smoking-type products in recent years, e-cigarettes have made rapid inroads into the lives of American adolescents," said Richard Miech, a senior investigator of the study.
The survey asked students whether they had used an e-cigarette or a tobacco cigarette in the past 30 days. More than twice as many 8th- and 10th-graders reported using e-cigarettes as reported using tobacco cigarettes.
Specifically, 9 percent of 8th-graders reported using an e-cigarette in the past 30 days, while only 4 percent reported using a tobacco cigarette. In 10th grade, 16 percent reported using an e-cigarette and 7 percent reported using a tobacco cigarette. Among 12th-graders, 17 percent reported e-cigarette use and 14 percent reported use of a tobacco cigarette.
The older teens report less difference in use of e-cigarettes versus tobacco cigarettes.
"This could be a result of e-cigarettes being relatively new," said Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator of the project. "So today's 12th-graders may not have had the opportunity to begin using them when they were younger. Future surveys should be able to tell us if that is the case."
A national survey of students in U.S. middle schools and high schools shows some important improvements in levels of substance use.
Both alcohol and cigarette use in 2014 are at their lowest points since the study began in 1975. Use of a number of illicit drugs also show declines this year.
These findings come from the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, which tracks trends in substance use among students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades. Each year the national study, now in its 40th year, surveys 40,000 to 50,000 students in about 400 secondary schools throughout the United States.
Alcohol
Alcohol use by the nation's teens continued its long-term decline in 2014. All three grades showed a decline in the proportion of students reporting any alcohol use in the 12 months prior to the survey; the three grades combined dropped from 43 percent to 41 percent, a statistically significant change.
"Since the recent peak rate of 61 percent in 1997, there has been a fairly steady downward march in alcohol use among adolescents," said Lloyd Johnston, the study's principal investigator. "The proportion of teens reporting any alcohol use in the prior year has fallen by about a third."
Of perhaps greater importance, the proportion of teens who report "binge drinking"—that is, consuming five or more drinks in a row at least once in the two weeks preceding the survey—fell significantly again this year to 12 percent for the three grades combined. This statistic is down from a recent high point of 22 percent in 1997. While this is an important improvement, say the investigators, still roughly one in five (19 percent) 12-graders report binge drinking at least once in the prior two weeks.
Some 12th-graders drink even more heavily, reporting having 10 or more, or 15 or more, drinks in a row on at least one occasion in the prior two weeks. Since 2005 (the first year that this "extreme binge drinking" was measured), these measures also have declined, from 11 percent to 7 percent in 2014 for 10 or more drinks, and from 6 percent to 4 percent for 15 or more drinks.
Peer disapproval of binge drinking has been rising since 2000 among teens. Declines in availability may be another contributing factor to the drops in teen drinking. In recent years, there has been a fair decline in all three grades in the proportion saying that alcohol is easy for them to get.
Cigarettes
Cigarette smoking also reached historical lows among teens in 2014 in all three grades. For the three grades combined, 28 percent reported any smoking in the prior month in 1997, the recent peak year, but that rate was down to 8 percent in 2014.
"The importance of this major decline in smoking for the health and longevity of this generation of young people cannot be overstated," Johnston said.
As with alcohol, there has been a substantial reduction in the proportion of students who say cigarettes are easy for them to get, and this decline continued into 2014. Increasing disapproval of smoking also has accompanied the decline in use, as well as an increased perception that smoking carries a "great risk" for the user. However, there were only modest further increases in these factors in 2014.
Illicit drugs
A number of measures of illicit drug use showed declines in use this year. The greatest decline was in students' use of synthetic marijuana—a particularly dangerous class of abusable substances.
Synthetic marijuana (K-2, "Spice"), sold over the counter in many states—particularly in gas stations, convenience stores and head shops—has synthetic chemical components of marijuana sprayed onto shredded plant material that is then smoked. It is manufactured and sold in an unregulated system—often being imported from overseas—and it can be very potent and unpredictable in its effects. Side effects are many and are reported to be as severe as acute psychosis and heart attacks.
"Most students still do not recognize synthetic marijuana as a dangerous class of drugs, although the proportion of 12th-graders reporting it as dangerous to use did rise significantly in 2014," Johnston said. "Efforts at the federal and state levels to close down the sale of these substances may be having an effect."
The proportion of 12th-graders reporting use of synthetic marijuana in the prior 12 months has fallen by nearly half. It was 11 percent when first included in the survey in 2011 and was down to 6 percent in 2014.
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