A new wave of vaping surges has engulfed the world, as World Health Organization (WHO) warns in its new global report.
More than 100 million people globally, including at least 15 million children aged 13-15, have become addicted to e-cigarettes.
Alarming is the rising surge in vaping, what WHO called a “new wave of nicotine addiction,” especially among young people, which is compromising the decades of achievements made against smoking.
Although world tobacco use is dropping, from 1.38 billion users in 2000 to 1.2 billion last year, the tobacco epidemic is not yet completely wiped out.
The WHO’s latest findings reveal that tobacco use is still surging, with one in five adults still smoking, which is contributing to the rising rate of mortality every year that would otherwise be preventable.
This is the first time in history that the World Health Organization has released its first global estimate of e-cigarette use.
The World Health Organization has released its first global estimate of e-cigarette use, revealing concerning numbers.
Over 100 million people vape worldwide, including roughly 86 million adults and 15 million teens aged 13–15. In regions with available data, adolescents are nine times more likely to use e-cigarettes than adults.
The report also spotlights a notable gender disparity in the global declining trend of tobacco use.
The tobacco prevalence rate among women has dropped from 11 percent in 2010 to just 6.6 percent in 2024 that shows women have taken the lead in discontinuation of tobacco use.
The number of female tobacco users earlier stood at 277 million; that has now dropped to 206 million over that period.
Men’s advancement is less rapid. Alarmingly, four out of five men are tobacco users worldwide, with the prevalence rate dropping from 41.4 percent to 32.5 percent in the last 14 years.
That less rapid decrease suggests the target of 30 percent reduction probably won’t be achieved until 2031.
