The Prevalence and Characteristics of E-Cigarette Users in the U.S.

Yameng Li,Zhe Yuan,David Levy

doi:10.3390/ijerph14101200

Abstract

Studies have examined the characteristics of individuals who use e-cigarettes, including sociodemographic and smoking characteristics, and the relationship of e-cigarette use to tobacco control policies. While most studies consider a subset of these characteristics with weak measures of regular e-cigarette use, this study uses a large, recent U.S. survey to simultaneously consider the association of each of these factors with different use measures. Data from the May 2014 Tobacco Use Supplement-Current Population Survey is supplemented with information on tobacco control policies. The prevalence of ever, current (at least 1 of the last 30 days), and regular (at least 20 of the last 30 days) e-cigarette use were 7.7%, 2.1% and 0.9%, implying that 27.0% of ever users were current users of which 45.3% were regular users. E-cigarette use varied by socio-demographic characteristics and by smoking status, and depended on the measure of use adopted. However, regardless of measures, e-cigarette use was higher among those smokers who smoked more cigarettes. The association with policies was generally weak, but we found more regular use by smokers in low tax and low tobacco control spending states. The results indicate that the user characteristics differ depending on the e-cigarette use measure. The measure of use should be carefully considered in analyzing how e-cigarette use affects cigarette use.

Highlights

While conventional cigarette smoking in the U.S has fallen to an all-time low [1], the use of alternative nicotine delivery products has increased [2,3]
We focus on at least 20 days use as a measure of regular use
We focus on the results for the regular use measure

Summary

Introduction

While conventional cigarette smoking in the U.S has fallen to an all-time low [1], the use of alternative nicotine delivery products has increased [2,3]. There has been a large increase in e-cigarette use, especially among the youth and young adults [4,5,6]. Studies have considered the socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of individuals, the use of other tobacco products, especially cigarettes, and the states or regions with heaviest use. Focusing on the U.S, five recent studies [4,5,7,8,9] employed an online sample with one using random digit dialing [5] to examine individual characteristics of ever and current e-cigarette users in the U.S Current use was defined as at least one of the last 30 days in all studies. The studies generally found higher use among those at younger ages, males, Whites, current compared to former smokers, former compared to never smokers, and users of non-combustible tobacco compared to non-users

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion