The Number Of Adolescents Smoking VapeMarijuana Doubled In Years

Researchers report that teenagers who are using vaping for taking marijuana are dramatically increasing in the United States.

In recent years, the number of teenage people in the United States experimenting with vaping pots has doubled and teenagers consuming marijuana, but vaping has been increased up to four times, reported a recent study.

Within the last year, at least one teenager in eight living in North America has vaped pot, and at least one in 10 since last month. This study was an analysis of data gathered from seventeen different studies.

The Number Of Adolescents Smoking VapeMarijuana Doubled In Years

Carmen Lim, the lead researcher of this study, the University of Queensland Ph.D. candidate of the National Center for Youth Substance Use Research, said that in the US and Canada, the trend of adolescents taking cannabis is going upward.

They also said that the preferences of teenagers are shifting from less potent products to high, from herbal cannabis to vape oil.

Between 2013 and 2020, the percentage of adolescents who have taken vape marijuana have increased from 6% to more than 14%. Over the past year, teenagers who tried vaping pot increased from 7% to 13%.

Frequent teenage users of pot are now wanting to experience vaping at an increasing rate. The percentage of adolescents within the last month who began vaping has increased four times, from 2% to nearly 8%.

This study did not review the total use of pot among adolescents, Lim said. So it is unclear whether teenagers who smoked pot are not choosing to vape or if more teenagers are taking pot because of vaping.

Experts believe that teenagers are switching from joints to Vape pens because the total number of pot-using adolescents has increased gradually.

Great Neck’s Center for Tobacco Control at Northwell Health’s director, Patricia Folan said that as cannabis and vaping both are becoming socially acceptable against smoking, it is obvious that adolescents would adopt this practice.

These figures came as researchers gathered data from around 200,000 teenagers who participated in studies related to pot use from 2013 and 2020.

Experts of addiction said that the same factors that increased the use of e-cigarettes are also fueling the increase of pot vaping.

In their background notes, researchers said that in the United States, the utilization of vaping products has increased 13-fold among students of middle and high schools, especially after 2011.

Zucker Hillside Hospital’s substance abuse treatment expert and a child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Scott Krakower said that marijuana pens are very easy to access. Teenagers can carry them in their bags, they can smoke them anytime and nobody would smell them. These factors have helped increase its use.

The Partnership to End Addiction’s prevention research and analysis’ Vice President, Linda Richter said that the legalization of marijuana has contributed to its upward trend, and to more adolescents smoking pot.

Richter said that she isn’t surprised by the dramatic rise in marijuana consumption in teenagers, given the shift to attitude towards it, its benefits, and its accessibility. Along with adults, teenagers too have been fooled into believing that marijuana is safe.

Krakower and Richter said that liquid pot vaping is much more potent compared to dried weed, and that is a huge problem.

Richter said that parents think that the marijuana that their teenage children are taking is not more dangerous compared to the marijuana they smoked in their days. They have no idea that marijuana’s potency has increased four times over the last decades.

Krakower noted that unlike single joint’s furtively smoking, teenagers can puff however much they like on vape pens. It hits them even harder and can smoke from their pens all day.