The Youth-Smoking Collapse Nobody Wants to Talk About

The Youth-Smoking Collapse Nobody Wants to Talk About

For more than a decade, one of the most persistent claims in the tobacco control echo chamber has been that nicotine vapes act as a “gateway” to smoking for young people. But the gap between the claim and the observable reality keeps growing wider. The latest example is from the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) in the United States. The 2025 results, released on March 4, show that youth use of tobacco and nicotine products continues t…