# Anti-Vaping Advertisements and Lung Injury News Coverage Helped Reverse Trend in Teen Vaping

- URL: https://theranews.net/blog/2026-04-25-anti-vaping-advertisements-and-lung-injury-news-coverage-helped-reverse-trend-in-89262e/
- Published: 2026-04-25
- Type: Archive summary (AI-assisted summary of third-party reporting)
- Original outlet: ucsd
- Original report: https://today.ucsd.edu/story/anti-vaping-advertisements-and-lung-injury-news-coverage-helped-reverse-trend-in-teen-vaping
- Topics: health-equity
- Publisher: TheraNews, operated by AdvancedCare USA Inc.
- Notice: Educational content, not medical, legal, billing or financial advice. Cite the original outlet, not this summary.

> Researchers at UC San Diego found that both anti-vaping advertising and widespread news coverage of a 2019 lung-injury outbreak tied to vaping were significantly associated with increased quit attempts among teen vapers and reduced openness to vaping among teens who had never tried it.

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A convergence of aggressive anti-vaping advertising and widespread news coverage of a lung-injury outbreak reversed a decade-long surge in youth vaping, according to UC San Diego researchers. The findings underscore how public health messaging and media attention can drive dramatic shifts in adolescent health behaviors.

## The Turnaround

Youth vaping in the United States peaked at 20% in 2019 before beginning a sustained decline, reaching 5.9% by 2024. The reversal coincided with two major media forces: aggressive FDA and state-led campaigns including California's Tobacco Control Program, and extensive news coverage of the e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) outbreak. EVALI was linked to more than 2,800 hospitalizations and 68 deaths, with nearly 20,000 EVALI-related news articles appearing online between July 2019 and March 2020.

## Research Results

Analyzing data from two cycles of the California Student Tobacco Survey, researchers compared quit attempts and intentions among current vapers, and susceptibility to vaping among never-vapers across 2017-18 and 2019-20. Among current vapers, quit attempts nearly doubled from 28.8% to 53.2%, and quitting intentions climbed from 56.9% to 79.1%. Among teens who had never vaped, susceptibility dropped from 30.3% to 25.7%. Notably, EVALI awareness showed stronger predictive power than paid advertising—emerging primarily through news coverage at no direct advertising cost, despite the two major campaigns having combined annual expenditures exceeding $100 million.

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*This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: [https://today.ucsd.edu/story/anti-vaping-advertisements-and-lung-injury-news-coverage-helped-reverse-trend-in-teen-vaping](https://today.ucsd.edu/story/anti-vaping-advertisements-and-lung-injury-news-coverage-helped-reverse-trend-in-teen-vaping)*