text: The PATH that leads to understanding the vaping epidemic – Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada
  by PSC Staff - May 12, 2020
  Since 2013, there has been a remarkable survey operating in the United States that has deepened our understanding of tobacco and e-cigarettes use and consequences. It is the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Survey (PATH) – a longitudinal, nationally representative survey of 46000 Americans. This survey generates information on tobacco and e-cigarette use behaviours, and with its longitudinal design it interviews the same individuals every year. It is planned that the survey will continue at least until 2024.
  BAT's diagrammatic representation of this process is considerably more complicated.
  The simplified model of transitions shown in the Figure "Behavioral Transitions" can be applied to each product — e-cigarettes, combustible cigarettes, cigars, hookah and smokeless tobacco. Further complication can be added by studying multiple use of products and movement from one product to another.
  Most of those who had smoked a cigarette in the past month in 2013-14 had done so again two years later. Fewer than one-third (29%) of youth, one-quarter (25%) of young adults and one-seventh (15%) of adults had two quit smoking two years later. Among those who had stopped in the year between, one-tenth of youth (11%) and one-thirtieth of adults (3%) had returned to smoking the following year.
  Among young adults, almost half of those who only used e-cigarettes at Wave 1 had stopped using any tobacco product over the two study waves (46%). Among those who used both e-cigarettes and combustible cigarettes, the proportion who ceased use of all nicotine products was much lower — slightly more than 1 in 10 (12%). (Table 1)
  Stanton et al, the authors of another study of PATTY data similarly concluded:
  "The majority of ENDS use is polytobacco use, and ENDS polytobacco users who also use cigarettes are less likely to stop using tobacco 2 or 3 years later compared with exclusive ENDS users."