Advocacy groups could declare victory over teen smoking. Instead, they’re going after vaping.

This month, the government made public the 2021 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). The results should be cause for celebration.

They have not been. They have been underplayed.

That does not reflect well on the CDC, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the Truth Initiative, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes, and the cancer, lung and heart disease associations that make up the anti-tobacco industrial complex.

The good news: Teen smoking continues to decline. Only 1.5 percent of middle school and high school students had smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days. Teen smoking has dropped by a stunning 90 percent in the last decade. Teen use of e-cigarettes is falling sharply, too. Adult cigarette smoking has also declined, to its lowest levels since the 1960s. This should continue, since most smokers take up the habit when they are young.

“This is an amazing success story,” says Robin Mermelstein, director of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a former president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT).

By email, she says: “There should be a lot of cheering for the steep and consistent decline in teen tobacco use — by any metric.”

Instead, the FDA, the CDC and the anti-tobacco advocacy groups accentuate the negative.The CDC headline: Youth E-Cigarette Use Remains Serious Public Health Concern. The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said: New Survey Shows that Despite Continued Progress, 2.55 Million Kids Used Tobacco Products in 2021 and 79% Used Flavored Products. Truth Initiative did not issue a news release about the survey.

In search of harm

This is a reminder that the opponents of tobacco share a peculiar addiction of their own: They are addicted to harm.

Good news about declining tobacco use, it turns out, is bad news for Tobacco-Free Kids and Truth Initiative.

By email, Clive Bates, a longtime anti-smoking advocate who formerly directed Action on Smoking and Health, explains:

The paradox of these health groups is that they need harm to justify the punitive and coercive policies that are at the heart of their model of public health. Harm generates the locus for public health intervention, organizations, grants, publications, conferences, treaties etc. Without harm, they lose their reason to exist.

It’s no wonder that, as teen smoking has declined, the anti-tobacco forces have taken on e-cigarettes, even though just about everyone, including the CDC, recognizes that vaping is much less harmful than smoking.

It’s also less harmful than other risky behaviors that are popular with teens. More teens drink alcohol than vape e-cigarettes; underage drinking causes 3,500 deaths a year, the CDC says.

Meantime, the number of teens who are vaping has fallen by about 60 percent from its peak in 2019. This, too, is barely mentioned by the anti-tobacco forces. So much for the so-called teen vaping epidemic.