Efforts to slow teen vaping nationally seem to be working, and even more so in Santa Clara County.
Teen vaping rates have hit an all-time low, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Youth Tobacco Survey, released in September. The survey shows that 5.9% of middle and high school students reported using e-cigarettes in 2024, down 1.8 percentage points from last year.
The rate for teens in Santa Clara County has dropped even lower than the national rate.
The California Youth Tobacco Survey released in 2023 showed that 5.2% of high-school-age youth in Santa Clara County reported they were vaping.
“That is a drop-off from the previous report in 2017 and 2018, where the rate was 13.2%,” said Don Tran, program manager for the Tobacco Free Communities Program at the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department.
Although rates seem to be decreasing, some students report that they have not seen any changes.
“I would argue that it has not changed,” said Lucy Indorante, 18, a first-year student at Ohlone College in Fremont. If you walk around a college campus, she said, “I feel like it’s everywhere, so I feel like at some point, everyone tries.”
She thinks people vape to help cope or to focus.
According to the 2023 California Youth Tobacco Survey, 40.8% of high school students who vaped planned to quit within the year, and 38.8% planned to quit within 30 days. Vaping uses an electronic cigarette or vaporizer device that simulates tobacco smoking and contains nicotine, an addictive substance.
Tran said the public health department’s efforts to enforce policies and work with advocates have led to the decrease in rates, especially in some racial and ethnic groups.
“It’s not evenly distributed,” he said about tobacco usage. “What we see is that within the 2023 survey, rates among Latinx youth are higher in demographics compared to other high school-age students.” He said the county programs try to address those disparities.
For example, he said, tobacco retailers tend to be clustered in lower-income communities. To address this tendency, the county requires that new retailers can’t open up within 500 feet of others, which prevents retailers from clustering together. Tobacco retailers also can’t be within 1,000 feet of youth-sensitive areas such as schools.
Availability is only one aspect that affects vaping rates; community can influence who is vaping as well.
Indorante was 15 when she walked into her school’s bathroom and was introduced to the fruity flavors of nicotine. She knew the health risks and said that she was never pressured into using.
“My best friend had moved away and most of my friends had transferred to other schools,” she said. “These girls were really nice to me, and they looped me into their friend group where they would all be hitting their vapes in the bathroom, and eventually they just started offering it to me.”
Lucine Mokahel, who attends both Ohlone and Cal State-East Bay, works with the California Youth Advocacy Network, which trains student researchers to collect data on and study tobacco use.
Mokahel heard many reasons why students might vape during a recent focus group, which kicked off the first of many that student researchers plan to hold over the next few years. Indorante took part in the focus group.
Mokahel said participants in the focus group said they use vapes for eating disorders because it replaces a meal, because they’re stressed or even to self-medicate for ADHD, or Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“We’ve heard, of course, a lot of the social aspect, but not just like your typical peer pressure. Smoking together allows for social interaction,” much like marijuana use or alcohol use.
Through the focus groups, where students can voice their histories with substance use, the organization aims to collect information from community college students to understand what resources would help them quit vaping and using other harmful substances, and to educate students about the risks of vaping and other habits.
“There’s so much misinformation. We’ve had one person who said they started vaping to quit cigarettes. You should not be swapping addiction for addiction, but it seems like when people don’t know where to go, it results in them turning to what they have,” Mokahel said.
Indorante, who is trying to stop vaping, said she and her friends didn’t know where to find confidential help.
“When you are a minor, it is so difficult to find help that is anonymous,” she said. “They would always recommend that you reach out to a medical professional, or they would always send you to therapy, but before I was 18, that would go straight back to my grandma. There are a lot of obstacles to go through when getting help under 21 because it is illegal.”
Tran said Santa Clara County Public Health would refer students to Kick It California, a free state program offering counseling and ways to slowly quit using tobacco products.
He attributes the decline in teen vaping to the efforts of “not just the county but community partners and policymakers.” He added, “we are really acknowledging that there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Nanki Kaur is a senior at American High School in Fremont.
