Motivation & Related Work
Vaping, the inhaling of a vapor created by vaping devices like e-cigarettes, was initially regarded as a less harmful substitution for cigarettes. However, vaping still introduces nicotine into the body. The prevalence of lung damage caused by vaping is actually so high that the CDC[1] needed to issue some guidance explicitly on it. According to the New York Post, a second vaping related death occured on November 9th, 2019. Overall, vaping has claimed at least 42 lives and injured over 2,000 others across the country[2].
As the popularity of vaping grows, concerns about vaping are covered both in academia and in the press[3,4]. A journal article published recently even describes the prevalence of vaping in a “red alert” state[5]. In the press, vaping is accused of being both a gateway drug and a new “drug” in itself. Moreover, 81% of Americans report teenagers who would not smoke cigarettes are using flavored e-cigarettes[6]. To provide grounds for potential public health interventions targeting this “scourge of drug”[4], we evaluated the current landscape of vaping usage among teenagers and young adults in NYC using pre-collected data and analyzed the relationship between vaping and other drug usage with mental health and risky/violent behaviors.
Data
We utilized the YRBSS dataset publicly available on CDC.gov. For a description of the data please refer to the Data tab on the top right corner of this webpage.
Research Questions
How has drug use changed over time in NYC’s youth?
How have mental health related issues changed over time in NYC’s youth?
What is the distribution of sex for each particular drug in 2017 across all boroughs?
What is the distribution of being involved in a fight for each particular drug in 2017 across all boroughs?
Can we build a model with currently available data to predict future vaping use?
More Vaping Facts
Here are some useful links for your reference: