Last week, very quietly, the Food and Drug Administration released data for its annual youth tobacco survey. The results were remarkable. The share of high school kids who vaped had dropped from nearly 30 percent in 2019 to 5.2 percent in 2025. And, incredibly, the number of high school kids who smoked was 1.4 percent. You read that right: just over one percent!
This is one of the greatest triumphs in the history of public health, and groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Lung Association—and the FDA itself—should be celebrating. Instead, they are obsessing over whether flavored e-cigarettes should be allowed.
It's a complete waste of time. There are already plenty of vapes on the market in every conceivable flavor, illegally. Kids could buy them, but don’t. And the only thing really at stake in the fight over flavored vapes is whether adults should have easy access to what has proven to be one of the best ways to quit tobacco, which continues to kill people.
