Thursday, December 13, 2018

Teen vaping in Colorado: 27% or 5.9%?

NPR reporter John Daley wonders why Colorado is having a high prevalence of teens who vape. What is newly elected Governor Jared Polis take on the issue? He has supported the legalization of recreational marijuana.
Hopefully, he is less prohibitionist than his predecessor, who launched a vape-free November campaign! As usual, the prevalence numbers that are presented aggregate all types of use, from once a month to every day: average cigarette use 7%, average e-cig use 27%! I have filled a request for data. We'll see what answer I get. I just received it: 
"5.9% of students used electronic vape products 20 or more days in the past month." 
Strangely there is no testimony from any teen vaper. It would have been interesting but it seems that's an impossible task for journalists reporting about teen vaping. It was the same in the recent article by CBC journalist Kelly Crowe about teen vaping in Canada.
I also wonder if John Hanley ever checked what happened to Julien Lavandier who was hooked to Juul. Is it still the case?
PS: I very quickly got an answer from Healthy Kids Colorado Survey that I inserted above within the post:
5.9% of students used electronic vape products 20 or more days in the past month (see the complete table below)
My main question remains: why not use a detailed breakdown of prevalence instead of an aggregate on very different uses? To make the situation much worse than it is? What else?


Results: SAS Output

Table of How many days used electronic vapor product
How many days usedFrequencyPercent95% Confidence Limits
electronic vapor productfor Percent
0 days3199172.993771.714874.2726
1 or 2 days48469.95639.533810.3787
3 to 5 days22384.53374.22764.8398
6 to 9 days15053.10542.85943.3513
10 to 19 days17023.55783.29533.8204
20 to 29 days10092.0971.84312.3509
All 30 days20943.75623.28654.2259
Total45385100

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