Vape pen statistics show two different patterns in the United States: e-cigarette use declined among middle and high school students from 2023 to 2024, while reported adult use rose between 2019 and 2023. The figures below separate age groups, time periods, and product categories so the numbers are not treated as one undifferentiated measure. Youth figures come from CDC and FDA publications, while the adult figures come from CDC National Center for Health Statistics data briefs.
Contents
- Youth e-cigarette use in 2024
- School-level rates and product comparisons
- Flavors, brands, and nicotine pouches
- Counts of students using tobacco products
- Adult e-cigarette use
- Adult differences by age, sex, race, and income
Youth e-cigarette use in 2024
In 2024, 5.9% of U.S. middle and high school students reported current e-cigarette use. That was down from 7.7% in 2023. The figures describe current use, meaning use during the measurement period used by the survey, rather than lifetime experimentation. Both percentages are reported by CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 524 (2025).
The corresponding estimated number of students also fell. The CDC MMWR 2024 NYTS reported 2.13 million U.S. students using e-cigarettes in 2023 and 1.63 million in 2024. These are student estimates for the United States, not a count of every vape pen user in the population.
The 2024 rate differed by school level. CDC Youth Tobacco Data (2024) reported current e-cigarette use of 7.8% among high school students and 3.5% among middle school students. In ratio form, the same source presented these as approximately 1 in 13 high school students and 1 in 29 middle school students reporting past-30-day e-cigarette use.
Those percentages and the student counts answer related but different questions. A rate describes the share of a group; a count describes the estimated number of students. Neither figure identifies how often an individual used a vape pen, how much aerosol was inhaled, or the air-quality conditions where use occurred.
School-level rates and product comparisons
E-cigarettes were more commonly reported than several other measured tobacco products in the 2024 school data. The following compact comparison keeps the school level and the past-30-day period explicit.
| Product and measure | Middle school | High school |
|---|---|---|
| E-cigarette use, 2024 | 1 in 29 | 1 in 13 |
| Nicotine pouch use, 2024 | 1 in 100 | 1 in 42 |
| Cigarette smoking, 2024 | 1 in 91 | nearly 1 in 59 |
| Cigar smoking, 2024 | 1 in 125 | 1 in 67 |
| Heated tobacco product use, 2024 | 1 in 143 | 1 in 111 |
All ratios in this table are reported by CDC Youth Tobacco Data (2024); they are not newly calculated estimates. The same source reported current e-cigarette use at 3.5% for middle school students and 7.8% for high school students, while the source’s one-in figures provide a more reader-friendly representation of the reported past-30-day measures.
The broader tobacco picture moved in the same downward direction as youth e-cigarette use. The CDC MMWR 2024 NYTS reported that use of any tobacco product among all U.S. middle and high school students fell from 10.0% in 2023 to 8.1% in 2024. Among high school students, any tobacco product use fell from 12.6% to 10.1% over the same period. Among middle school students, any tobacco product use was 5.5% in 2024.
Hookah use among all students fell from 1.1% in 2023 to 0.7% in 2024, according to the CDC MMWR 2024 NYTS. This comparison is useful for context, but it does not mean that every product has the same exposure profile or effect on indoor air.
Flavors, brands, and nicotine pouches
Flavored products were common among students who had used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. CDC Youth Tobacco Data (2024) reported that 88.2% of high school students in that group used a flavored e-cigarette. The corresponding share among middle school students was 85.7%.
Brand reporting changed sharply for Elf Bar. The FDA’s “Youth E-Cigarette Use Drops to Lowest Level in a Decade” (2024) reported that the share of youth reporting Elf Bar e-cigarette use fell from 56.7% in 2023 to 36.1% in 2024. The source also said the FDA had issued more than 1,000 warning letters connected with Elf Bar enforcement by early 2024 and had issued 240 civil money penalties to retailers and others in the supply chain tied to that enforcement.
Nicotine pouches were a separate category in the reported youth data. The FDA’s “Youth E-Cigarette Use Drops to Lowest Level in a Decade” (2024) reported youth nicotine pouch use of 1.5% in 2023 and 1.8% in 2024. In 2024, 22.4% of current youth nicotine pouch users reported using pouches daily.
Among current youth nicotine pouch users who reported a brand in 2024, the same FDA source listed the following shares: Zyn, 68.7%; on!, 14.2%; Rogue, 13.6%; Velo, 10.7%; and Juice Head ZTN, 9.8%. These brand percentages describe the reporting group identified by the source. They should not be read as shares of all U.S. students, all nicotine users, or the entire retail market.
Counts of students using tobacco products
Estimated student counts provide another view of the 2024 results. The CDC MMWR 2024 NYTS reported 640,000 middle school students and 1.58 million high school students currently using any tobacco product. For current e-cigarette use, the reported counts were 410,000 middle school students and 1.21 million high school students.
The same source reported 320,000 middle school students currently using heated tobacco products, 220,000 currently using hookah, and 190,000 currently using pipe tobacco. For high school students, the source reported 760,000 currently using any combustible tobacco product and 840,000 currently using multiple tobacco products.
These categories can overlap. A student using more than one product may appear in more than one product-specific count, and “any tobacco product” is a broader category than e-cigarette use alone. For that reason, adding the counts together would not produce a valid total. The reported counts are best used to show the scale of each measured group, not to construct a new estimate.
The middle-school and high-school results also should not be combined without the survey’s underlying population weights and definitions. The CDC MMWR 2024 NYTS figures are estimates for the respective student groups, and the CDC Youth Tobacco Data (2024) ratios are presented as source-reported approximations.
Adult e-cigarette use
Adult vape pen statistics cover a different population and, in several cases, a different year than the youth results. CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 475 (2023) reported that 4.5% of U.S. adults aged 18 and over were current e-cigarette users in 2021. In that same year, 11.0% of adults ages 18–24 were current users.
The adult trend figures in CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 524 (2025) use later observations. They reported adult e-cigarette use rising from 4.5% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2023. The source also reported a decline from 4.5% in 2019 to 3.7% in 2020. Because these figures cover different years and the 2021 brief and 2025 brief are separate publications, they should be read as reported source estimates rather than blended into one continuous series without checking the underlying survey definitions.
The 2021 adult data also described patterns of exclusive and combined use. CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 475 (2023) reported that 1.3% of all adults both smoked cigarettes and used e-cigarettes, 10.2% smoked cigarettes only, and 3.2% used e-cigarettes only. “Current e-cigarette user” and “e-cigarettes only” are not interchangeable categories, so these figures should remain separate.
Adult differences by age, sex, race, and income
Age differences were visible in the 2023 adult estimates. CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 524 (2025) reported e-cigarette use of 15.5% among adults ages 21–24, 12.6% among adults ages 25–34, 7.3% among adults ages 35–49, and 0.9% among adults ages 65 and over. These are age-group estimates for 2023, not forecasts of future use.
For 2021, CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 475 (2023) reported a current e-cigarette use rate of 5.1% for men and 4.0% for women. The same source reported rates of 5.2% for White non-Hispanic adults, 2.9% for Asian non-Hispanic adults, 2.4% for Black non-Hispanic adults, and 3.3% for Hispanic or Latino adults.
Income was also associated with different reported rates in the 2021 adult data. Adults with family income below 200% of the federal poverty level had a current e-cigarette use rate of 5.8%. The rate was 4.8% for adults with family income from 200% to less than 400% of the federal poverty level, and 3.6% for adults with family income at 400% of the federal poverty level or more. These are grouped estimates; they do not establish why the rates differed.
Taken together, the figures distinguish youth prevalence, adult prevalence, product-specific counts, and demographic estimates. They also show why a single “vape pen statistics” number can be misleading: the answer changes with the population, year, definition of current use, and product category being measured.