Friends Can Help When Teens Try to Quit Vaping

TOPLINE:

A substantial proportion of high school students who attempted to quit electronic cigarettes reported successful cessation with support from friends. Punitive measures and temporary loss of access to vapes were associated with continued use.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers surveyed 4855 students from eight high schools in Connecticut to examine reasons for quitting or reducing vaping among youth.
• They used an anonymous online questionnaire available in English and Spanish for assessing use of electronic cigarettes.
• Overall, 756 high school students (mean age, 15.9 years; 54% girls) who reported ever having used an electronic cigarette shared their experiences with quitting or reducing vaping, including reasons for quitting and outcomes associated with quitting.

TAKEAWAY:

• Among adolescents who ever vaped, 56.8% only vaped a few times without continuing, while 32.2% reported seriously attempting to quit or reduce use in the past.
• Common reasons for quitting included concerns about health (50.2%), concerns about addiction (45.5%), cost (42.5%), impact of vaping on ability to play sports (30%), and wasting too much time on vaping (23.2%).
• Among those attempting to quit, 40.3% successfully stopped vaping and did not use other nicotine products, 39.6% continued vaping, and 20.1% quit but used other nicotine/tobacco products.
• Peer support was associated with lower odds of continuing to vape (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 0.03; P = .001) and using other tobacco products (AOR, 0.14; P = .02), while punishment or temporary loss of access was linked to continued vaping (P ≤ .03).

IN PRACTICE:

“Although many adolescents try to quit or cut back on vaping, efforts are needed to help support quitting. Our findings indicate that interventions should address co-use and encourage cessation of all tobacco products to promote public health,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Krysten W. Bold, PhD, of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. It was published online on February 20, 2025, in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

LIMITATIONS:

Responses were obtained through retrospective recall and self-reported surveys without biochemical verification of tobacco use status. The generalizability of this study may have been limited by its local Connecticut sample. Researchers did not assess past dependence or vaping frequency prior to quitting attempts.

DISCLOSURES:

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. The authors reported no conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.