Examining the Relationship between the Use and Awareness of Alternative Tobacco Products and Smoking Quit Attempt among U.S Adolescents.

Introduction: Public health interventions have heightened awareness of risk factors and ill effects of tobacco use. Though sales of conventional tobacco products have steadily been declining, there is the advent of a new generation of alternative tobacco products that are being marketed with claims of reduced harms and smoking cessation aid. Aim: The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of tobacco quit attempt among U.S. adolescents and to examine its relationship to the use and self-reported awareness of two alternative tobacco products (E-cigarettes and Heated Tobacco Products). Methods: This is a cross-sectional analysis of data (2,271) from the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) of middle and high school students in the U.S. Logistic regression analysis was employed to determine the odds of tobacco quit attempt adjusting for age, race, gender, school type, and household tobacco exposure. Results: The overall prevalence of tobacco quit attempt among e-cigarette users and HTP users was 52.50% and 5.20%, respectively. Results of multivariate regression analyses identified age (OR=0.74, 95% CI:0.57-0.96), race (OR=1.41, 95% CI:1.14-1.75), and household tobacco smoke exposure (OR=1.19, 95% CI:1.01-1.39) as the main factors that are significantly associated with tobacco quit attempt adjusting for all other covariates. Conclusion: The results of this study did not show a statistically significant association between the awareness and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products and tobacco smoking quit attempt. Race, age, and exposure to household tobacco smoking were found to be positively associated with quit attempts. Further studies are needed to clarify whether the use and awareness of e-cigarette and HTPs are associated with smoking quit attempt

Investigating the association between multiple substance Use and dating violence involvement among U.S adolescents

Adolescent dating violence and substance use are clinical and public health concerns. Prior meta-analytic studies indicate that about 20% of adolescents reported having experienced physical dating violence (PDV) and 10% reported sexual dating violence (SDV). This study aims to assess the prevalence of dating violence, and the association between substance use and dating violence among adolescents. Our study population is derived from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)a cross-sectional, nationally representative survey of United States (U.S) adolescents. The sample comprised 13,677 adolescents between the ages of 13–19 years currently enrolled in school. Descriptive analysis estimated the prevalence of dating violence and substance use. Multiple logistic regression adjusted for confounders of the association between substance use and dating violence. The confounders adjusted for include sex, school grade, race, academic grade, and duration of night sleep. The prevalence of PDV and SDV was each 8.2%. Only 2.6% of this nationally representative sample had experienced both PDV and SDV. Adolescents who used three or more substances had 2.1 times higher odds of PDV (OR = 2.10, 95% CI = 1.27–3.47, p < 0.0001), and SDV (OR = 2.11, 95% CI = 1.34–3.34, p < 0.0001) respectively, and 2.8 (OR = 2.75, 95% CI = 1.34–5.61, p < 0.0001) times higher odds of both PDV and SDV in the past month. Multiple substance use increases the odds of dating violence. Policy and interventions should be focused on preventing substance use initiation among substance-naïve adolescents and to advocate abstinence and gradual reduction of substances used to mitigate the prevalence of dating violence