CNN: More adolescent e-cigarette users report vaping within five minutes of waking up

UC’s Ashley Merianos, an associate professor of human services, is cited as an expert for national media in a review of new tobacco and vaping research on adolescents and vaping.

The research, which CNN covered and appears in JAMA OPEN Network, found that among adolescents who only use e-cigarettes, the percentage who used the products within the first five minutes of waking up in a day was less than 1% between the years 2014 and 2017, but that shifted to 10.3% from 2017 through 2021.

This study’s findings suggest that e-cigarettes may be putting a new generation of adolescents at risk for nicotine addiction, and research has shown that many adolescents are unaware that most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, said Merianos.

Merianos, who was not involved in the study, stated: “It is encouraging that the prevalence of e-cigarette use has declined among U.S. adolescents from 2019 to 2021. However, the addiction and intensity of use trends reported in this study are concerning, especially since tobacco use is typically established during adolescence.”

In addition to being on faculty at UC, Merianos is also a research affiliate member of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Thirdhand Smoke Research Consortium. She is a prolific researcher and has extensive training and experience in the epidemiology and prevention of substance use with an emphasis on tobacco, quantitative statistical methods, and clinical and translational research in the pediatric healthcare setting.

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