Several people sit on a wooden table while one of them holds an electronic cigarette or vape.
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What you need to know

  • While electronic cigarette use is now in decline after an all-time high recorded in 2019, nearly 6 percent of middle and high school students still vape. But according to 2020 data, most of those students would like to quit.
  • According to the CDC, the negative health effects of vaping nicotine include harming a young person’s brain development, increasing their risk for addiction to other drugs, and being more likely to smoke cigarettes in the future. 
  • A new study shows that a medication that helps adults stop using tobacco—called varenicline—can also help young adults quit vaping.

Electronic cigarettes, or vapes, are the most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. middle and high school students. While their use is now in decline after an all-time high recorded in 2019, nearly 6 percent of these students (1.63 million people) still vape.

“The rise in vaping amongst young people was the fastest rise of any drug known since they started keeping track: It went from nonexistent to 25 percent of high school seniors vaping regularly [from 2011] to 2019,” Dr. A. Eden Evins, a psychiatrist and Cox Family professor in the field of addiction medicine at Harvard Medical School, tells Public Good News. “A lot of kids would try vaping because of the flavors, and they didn’t expect that they would get addicted, and then all of a sudden they are.” 

Yet, according to 2020 data, most students who vape say they’d like to quit. Now, a study led by Evins shows that a medication that helps adults stop using tobacco—called varenicline—can also help young adults quit vaping.

Read on to learn more about the risks of youth vaping, varenicline, the study, and its findings.

Why is vaping so harmful to young adults?

Most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, a harmful and highly addictive chemical that’s found in tobacco. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, negative health effects of vaping nicotine include harming a young person’s brain development, increasing their risk for addiction to other drugs, and being more likely to smoke cigarettes in the future. 

According to Evins, “adolescents are sort of uniquely vulnerable to these effects of nicotine on the brain,” noting that using nicotine for even a couple of weeks can make cocaine or heroin more addictive for this group.

This propelled Evins and her team to test varenicline’s effectiveness treating young people addicted to vaping. 

What’s varenicline, and how does it work? 

Varenicline, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006, is an oral medication that helps reduce nicotine cravings. It tricks your brain into feeling the effect of smoking by partially activating the parts of the brain activated by nicotine. The medication also makes smoking less satisfying by blocking nicotine from stimulating your brain’s nicotine receptors. 

The medication is usually prescribed for 12 weeks to adults who are trying to quit smoking. 

Doctors often start the prescription before you quit so your body can adjust to it before withdrawal symptoms begin. 

What did the study find?

For the trial, Evins and her team enrolled 261 participants between the ages of 16 and 25 who had become addicted to vaping nicotine and vaped daily or almost daily. The participants were divided into three groups: 

  1. One group was given the medication for 12 weeks along with remote behavioral counseling with a fellow young adult; 
  2. A second group was given a placebo along with the remote counseling; 
  3. A third group only received text messaging support via a program called This is Quitting.

The study found that after 12 weeks, 51 percent of the participants in the varenicline group stopped vaping, compared to 14 percent of placebo participants and 6 percent of those who received text messaging support. 

Additionally, the trial found that the medication was well tolerated and didn’t cause any serious side effects. 

“The most common side effects that were linked to varenicline were nausea, vivid dreams, and insomnia,” Evins says. “And most of those were mild to moderate.”

The study concluded that varenicline, alongside behavioral counseling, can be effective at helping young people quit vaping. 

“It’s pretty tolerable, and it’s important to quit,” Evins adds. “People can quit, and the sooner, the better.”

How can young adults get a prescription for varenicline?

Evins recommends you talk to a health care provider about varenicline if you have cravings and you’d like to quit (Varenicline is approved for adults but it can be prescribed off-label for people 16 and up.). It “would likely be very helpful to help you quit,” she adds. 

To learn more about varenicline and quitting vaping, check out these resources: