More Minnesota high school students are using e-cigs than conventional cigarettes

On November 10, 2014, the Minnesota Department of Health put out a press release reporting that in 2014 12.9 percent of high school students had smoked and e-cigarette in the last 30 days compared to 10.6 percent of high school students who had smoked a conventional cigarette in the last 30 days.  (28 percent of high school students had ever tried an e-cigarette.)
 
This result is being hailed by e-cigarette enthusiasts like the American Council on Science and Health and Mike Siegel as evidence that e-cigarettes are not causing kids to smoke cigarettes and even suggest that e-cigarettes may deserve credit for the drop in cigarette smoking
 
These claims cannot be demonstrated because, as with all cross-sectional data, one cannot demonstrate causality.  In addition, the Minnesota Department of Health press release did not include any information on dual use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes so we do not know how many high school students are using e-cigarettes instead of cigarettes who would otherwise be smoking cigarettes.
 
That fact did not stop ACSH from disparaging concern about the exploding e-cigarette use among these students that was expressed by Minnesota's Health Commissioner.  Here's what they said on their website:
 

“These new findings indicate that our statewide efforts to reduce and prevent conventional tobacco use among Minnesota children are working,” said Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger. “At the same time, we are seeing a wild-west approach toward e-cigarettes, which allows tobacco companies unlimited marketing access to young men and women. This has led to increasing numbers of Minnesota high school and middle school students using e-cigarettes.”
 
“And there you have it, in a nutshell,” commented ACSH’s Dr. Gil Ross. “There are simply none so blind as those who just will not see, and that characterizes many of the so-called public health ‘experts’ and local politicians and regulators who just won’t add 2+2 and come up with 4. Nope, they’d rather worry about the ‘wild west’ of e-cigarettes and the ‘exposure to our youth from tobacco companies.’ Over and over, we see these ignorant, ideologically-bound, or corrupt individuals linking e-cigs to ‘Big Tobacco,’ or failing to read the handwriting on the wall: as e-cig use, even experimentation, goes up, the rate of addiction to deadly, toxic cigarettes goes down. These new data clearly illustrate this phenomenon: the spokesman seeks hither and yon for some explanation as to how/why the teen smoking rate fell so much, and simultaneously bemoans the increased use of e-cigs. If he could take a step back, he might see that these phenomena are linked!”

 
Of course, he might also see that the drop in high school smoking might have been even bigger absent e-cigarettes.  One thing we know for sure is that e-cigarettes are rapidly penetrating the youth market as a form of delivering the addictive drug nicotine.