Vaping rates have fallen among Canadian youth — but that could be temporary / Les taux de vapotage ont diminué parmi les ados canadiens – mais cela pourrait être temporaire

By Katie Dangerfield with comments from Dr. Nicholas Chadi, Global News, May 18, 2023

Vaping rates among young Canadians have fallen in recent years, but some experts expect those numbers to tick back up now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.

The numbers stem from Health Canada’s recent Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey, released Tuesday, which surveyed 61,096 students in grades 7 to 12 between September 2021 and June 2022 across nine provinces. 

Twenty-nine per cent of students reported ever using an e-cigarette in 2021-22, a decrease from 34 per cent in 2018-19.

“Rates did go down slightly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” explained Dr. Nicholas Chadi, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent and addiction medicine at St. Justine Children’s Hospital in Montreal.

“When the pandemic hit, there were [different] rules restricting contact between young people, which limited the number of opportunities for young people to initiate or use in social contexts. Those limitations and rules are no longer in place. So what we expected was to see a bit of an uptick after that.” (read more)