Brief reportFlavored Tobacco Product Use Among U.S. Young Adults
Section snippets
Background
Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing more than 400,000 people annually.1 Since the Master Settlement Agreement, which restricted tobacco marketing to youth,2 the tobacco industry has become increasingly strategic in its targeting of young adults.3 In 2010, young adults aged 18–25 years reported the highest prevalence of current use of a tobacco product (40.8%) compared to youth aged 12–17 years (10.7%) or adults aged ≥26 years (27.2%).4 The most recent estimate
Methods
This study uses cross-sectional data from the second wave of the Legacy Young Adult Cohort Study, a nationally representative sample of young adults aged 18–34 years drawn from GfK's Knowledge Panel.® Details of study recruitment and methods have been published elsewhere.14 The present study was approved by the Independent Investigational Review Board, Inc. Online consent was collected from participants before questionnaire self-administration. Data were collected in January 2012 with 4236
Results
Of the 992 participants (26.7%) reporting past-30-day use of any tobacco product, 982 provided information on use of flavored brands. The prevalence of any current flavored tobacco product use was 18.5% (95% CI=15.2%, 22.2%). When examined by product type (Table 1), flavored tobacco product use ranged from 3% for cigarettes to 59% for hookah and from 1% (cigarettes) to 50% (hookah) after excluding menthol-brand use. Dual use of menthol and flavored tobacco products varied from 1% (nicotine
Discussion
This is the first nationally representative study to examine the prevalence of flavored tobacco product use following the 2009 FDA ban on flavorings in cigarettes. In this large sample of U.S. young adults, almost 20% currently use a flavored tobacco product, and the most common flavored products included flavored pipe tobacco, little cigars, and hookah. This is higher than the 10.1% of all adults reporting past-30-day use of a flavored cigar in 2009.15 Use was less likely among those with
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