Three large studies find that smoking and vaping are starting at increasingly younger ages

Smoking rates may be falling, but three large studies presented at the European Respiratory Society congress in Barcelona point to a broader nicotine problem. People are starting younger, while vaping is spreading quickly among children and young people in Austria and Ireland.

One Austrian study followed 15,056 people aged 6 to 82 and examined tobacco use between 2012 and 2024. Smoking declined from 24.2% to 16.3%, but use of alternative nicotine products, including vapes, rose from 0% to 17.2%. The share of people using more than one tobacco or nicotine product, such as smoking and vaping, increased from 5.2% to 18.3%.

The average age at which people began smoking fell from 20 among those born in the 1930s to about 15 among people born in the 2000s. The proportion of smokers under 18 nearly doubled, from 2.6% to 5%.

Charmaine Helk-Lim of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Lung Health and Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna said the decline in smoking masked a wider nicotine problem. “The epidemic is not receding; it is changing form and affecting younger children than before,” she said. She urged families to discuss nicotine products, including electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco, with children before adolescence because use often begins at 15 or 16.

A second study, led by Joan Hanafin of TobaccoFree Research Institute Ireland, examined 5,265 Irish teenagers aged 15 and 16 in 2015, 2019 and 2024. The proportion who smoked fell from 13.9% in 2015 to 11.7% in 2024, after reaching 14.4% in 2019. The supplied report ends while describing the rise in vaping among the group.

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The decline in smoking masks a wider nicotine problem. The epidemic is not receding; it is changing form and affecting younger children than before.