Study: Teens are so over smoking traditional cigarettes

Traditional cigarette use among teens is now only slightly higher than use of illicit drugs, excluding marijuana, according to the 2015 edition of the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Monitoring the Future survey.

The poll canvasses 8th–12th graders to determine how many students are using illegal substances, and with what frequency. Below is the chart showing the top results for drugs used in the past 30 days: Just 7% of teens reported having smoked traditional cigarettes, while 5.1% said they’d used an illegal drug aside from marijuana. Teens appear to have switched to e-cigarettes as their preferred form of smoking.

The most popular illicit drugs other than marijuana were amphetamines at 2.7%, followed by hallucinogens at 1%.

As far as e-cigarettes go, because they are unregulated, there is limited data on what chemicals teens are actually smoking, the survey said. When asked what they inhaled the last time they used an e-cigarette, only about 20% said they were using nicotine.

“Most say they inhaled flavoring alone and many admitted they were unsure what they inhaled,” the Institute said in a release. “In fact, about 13 percent of eighth graders who use e-cigarettes said they did not know what was in the device they used.”

Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.