A new study documents a shift from smoking to vaping among adolescent cannabis consumers, which the researchers think shows there is "an urgent need for public health intervention and increased regulation." But it is hard to see how that conclusion follows from the survey data, especially since vaping avoids the potentially dangerous combustion products generated by smoking.
In the study, which was reported yesterday in the journal Addiction, Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes and her collaborators analyze data from the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, which surveys students in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades. Between 2017 and 2019, the overall rate of "occasional" cannabis consumption without vaping (defined as use on five or fewer days in the previous month) fell from 6.9 percent to 4.4 percent. The prevalence of "frequent" use (on six or more days in the previous month) fell from 3.8 percent to 2.1 percent.
