Survey: Vaping Use Up Among Indiana Teens

The annual Indiana Youth Survey was administered to nearly 120,000 students in Grade 6 to 12 in 407 Indiana schools.

(Bloomington, Ind.) – Nearly a third of high school seniors in Indiana admit to vaping in the last month.

That’s one of the finding in the 28th annual Indiana Youth Survey released by Indiana University – Bloomington.

The survey is administered to nearly 120,000 students in grades six through 12 statewide, asking them about substance use, risky behavior and more.

According to the survey, the use of vaping products among high school seniors has increased 45 percent from 2017.

Overall, approximately 16.9 percent of students grades seven through 12 reported electronic vapor product use in the past 30 days.

"We added questions about electronic vapor products to the survey in 2015 after an alarming and rapid increase in the number of youth using vapor products and e-cigarettes," said Ruth Gassman, executive director of the Institute for Research on Addictive Behavior. "Though we saw a decline last year, we were still concerned about the numbers of youth using vapor products. With this year's survey results, we confirm that our concern is well-founded and the use of these products among teens continues to be a public health issue."

In addition to electronic vapor products, the survey found 5.7 percent of students in seventh through 12th grade used cigarettes in the past 30 days, three percent used smokeless tobacco, 2.9 percent smoked cigars and 2.1 percent smoked a pipe.

Students were also asked about their perception of drug use among their peers. The survey found that students thought more than 45 percent of their peers were using prescription painkillers, when the actual reported use is just 1.6 percent.

The full Indiana Youth Survey can be found at inys.indiana.edu.