Flavored marijuana vapes becoming new face of teen drug use, sparking addiction fears

University of Michigan

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Flavored marijuana vaping is now the most common form of use among American teenagers who vape cannabis, according to new findings from the University of Michigan's annual Monitoring the Future surveys.

 

The research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found particularly sharp increases among younger teens between 2021 and 2024. Among eighth graders who vaped marijuana, the percentage using flavored solutions jumped from 47% in 2021 to 63% in 2024. The trend was similar for older students, with use climbing from 41% to 53% for 10th graders and from 36% to 50% for 12th graders.

 

"The findings suggest that these products are gaining traction among youth; in fact, since the pandemic onset in 2020 youth appear to be turning toward these products while reducing their use of all other drugs," said Richard Miech, principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future study at U-M's Institute for Social Research.

 

The overall percentage of marijuana users who chose to vape the drug also grew over the study period. Among eighth graders who had used marijuana in the past 12 months, the percentage who vaped it increased from 48% to 57%. In 10th grade, the number went from 60% to 66%, and among 12th graders, it rose from 58% to 67%.

 

"Flavored vaping solutions offer a discreet mode of cannabis use, with flavors apparently enhancing their appeal," Miech said. "The study results suggest that a growing proportion of youth find the newly available flavors—especially fruit flavors—more attractive than the standard cannabis taste.

 

"Vaping does not produce the distinctive odor that comes from smoking cannabis, and vaping devices can be quickly concealed if an authority figure appears unexpectedly."  

 

More addictive? 

 

This increase in those who vaped highlights growing public health concerns about changing patterns of substance use among teens.

 

"As for health consequences for cannabis use, one of the most potentially serious is addiction," Miech said. "Should cannabis use become more popular among youth in future years, then a greater number will end up with an addiction that can impair their social and academic life. Many people may not realize that more adolescents meet the criteria for cannabis use disorder than for alcohol use disorder, with 5% affected by cannabis compared to 3% for alcohol." 

 

These results point to flavored marijuana vaping solutions as a critical area for future research and policy development. The study's authors suggest that these findings underscore the need for targeted policies, interventions and educational campaigns to address and mitigate this escalating concern among young people.

 

"Our survey includes questions on both cannabis's perceived risk and its social acceptability," Miech said. "Interestingly, perceived risk among adolescents actually increased over the study period from 2021-24, and social acceptability has gone down.  That being said, our questions so far have been about cannabis use in general, and not flavored cannabis solutions, which students may view differently." 

 

Next? Would restricting flavored vapes work?

 

Recent trends in adolescent cannabis vaping raise concerns about the best way to protect youth. Restricting flavors may seem like an easy solution, but it is by no means a guaranteed success, researchers said.

 

Teens who seek flavored cannabis products could easily shift to unflavored options or return to smoking cannabis in traditional forms. At the same time, adults in states with legal cannabis may resist limits on flavor choices, and industry lobbying could block such policies.

 

"An alternative approach to restricting supply of cannabis flavors is to restrict demand," Miech said. "That is, to reduce teens' interest and willingness to use cannabis, including flavored vaping solutions. A demand reduction approach has been very effective for cigarettes." 

 

Evidence from previous studies on cigarette use supports this approach. In 1998, 35% of 12th graders had used cigarettes in the past month. By 2024, that number dropped to 3%. Cigarettes remained legal and available, but broad-based media campaigns, public education and tighter rules on marketing to youth drove the change. 

 

"In my view, the cannabis industry should be deeply concerned about any rise in youth cannabis use," Miech said. "In today's polarized political climate, there are few issues with bipartisan appeal, but portraying the cannabis industry as a threat to children could well be one of them."

 

Study: Trends in US Adolescent Use of Vaping and Flavored Solutions for Marijuana Consumption, 2021-2024

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Journal

Journal of Adolescent Health

 

Diversity of skin and hair color in humans is controlled by the levels at which a major albinism gene, OCA2, undergoes exon skipping – according to new research

PLOS

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Five human hands on brown surface.

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Credit: Clay Banks, Unsplash (CC0, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Genetics: https://plos.io/3If3j5v

Article title: From paleness to albinism: Contribution of OCA2 exon 10 skipping to hypopigmentation

Author countries: France, United Kingdom

Funding: Genespoir, the French albinism association to SJ; the French National Research Agency / Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-21-CE17-0041-01 to BA); the Wellcome Trust (224643/Z/21/Z to P.I.S.); the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Lecturer Programme (CL-2017-06-001 to P.I.S.); the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR 203308 to P.I.S.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Journal

PLOS Genetics

DOI

10.1371/journal.pgen.1011801 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

 

Cyclones increase risk of death for children under five

Study estimates 850,000 deaths of young children linked to cyclones in two decades

PLOS

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Spatial distribution of 10km810km raster level deaths in children under 5 years old attributable to cyclone exposure in 2000-2020. Note: This map was reproduced from https://www.naturalearthdata.com/.

 

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Credit: Guo Y, et al., 2025, PLOS Medicine, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Tropical cyclones pose an important risk of death for children under five in low- and middle-income countries, reports a new study led by Renjie Chen of Fudan University, China, published September 25th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine.

Tropical cyclones, which include typhoons and hurricanes, are among the most frequent and destructive natural disasters. These storms are becoming more common and more severe due to climate change, which has raised concerns about their effects on young children, who are especially susceptible to drowning, injuries from high winds and flying debris, lack of clean drinking water or the breakdown of health care services. Previous studies have often focused on single cyclone events or high-income regions, leaving a gap in our understanding of the effects in countries with limited resources.

To understand the impact of tropical cyclones on the health of children under five in low- and middle-income countries, the researchers used survey data to identify deaths after a storm event. They looked at the survival of the child’s siblings at the same age to see if a death at this age was unusual, and thus more likely linked to the cyclone. The analysis included 100,798 children under five who had died and 247,445 surviving siblings across 34 low- and middle-income countries. Researchers found a significant link between deaths of children under the age of five and exposure to a cyclone in the month before death.

The global analysis demonstrates the substantial risk posed by cyclones to young children. Overall, the researchers estimate that cyclones caused the death of 850,000 children under five from 2000 to 2020. These findings illuminate the need for disaster preparedness in vulnerable regions to reduce the number of child deaths linked to these events.

The authors add, “Across 34 low- and middle-income countries, tropical cyclones were linked to higher under-five mortality, with an estimated 850,000 child deaths from 2000 to 2020. The findings underscore the urgent need for disaster preparedness that ensures safe water, sanitation, and health services for vulnerable communities.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: https://plos.io/3HYRfW2 

Citation: Guo Y, Zhu Y, He C, Gao Y, Zhou L, Bachwenkizi J, et al. (2025) Cyclone exposure and mortality risk of children under 5 years old: An observational study in 34 low- and middle-income countries. PLoS Med 22(9): e1004735. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004735

Author countries: China, United States, Tanzania

Funding: see manuscript

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Journal

PLOS Medicine

DOI

10.1371/journal.pmed.1004735 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

 

Restored mangrove forests could act as important carbon stores, per study examining Vietnamese mangrove carbon since 1900, but they might not have “normal” ecological function

PLOS

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Sediment coring in old-forest mangrove within an intermediate-intensity shrimp farm pond in the Red River delta, northern Vietnam.

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Credit: Heidi Burdett (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation: https://plos.io/3HPdSfr

Article title: Land use change drives decadal-scale persistence of sediment organic carbon storage of restored mangrove

Author countries: Sweden, China, Vietnam, United Kingdom

Funding: This work was supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund to HLB; and Swedish Research Council (#2023-05759) to HLB and NTKC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Journal

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

DOI

10.1371/journal.pstr.0000197 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

COI Statement

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

 

“What if” scenario reveals the impact of a drastically smaller NIH

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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Roughly half of all FDA-approved drugs from 2000 onward rely on publications funded by grants that would have been cut assuming a 40% reduction in U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in past decades, say authors of a new Policy Forum. In this piece, Pierre Azoulay and colleagues present an analysis of a hypothetical alternative history.  “Assuming that the near term resembles the recent past,” they say, “our analysis indicates that substantial NIH budget cuts – including those implemented at the funding margin – could curtail research linked to a large share of potential drug approvals.” The NIH, historically one of the world’s most consistently supported biomedical research funders, faces unprecedented uncertainty. In 2025, the agency began canceling existing grants and delaying new ones, with funding for competitive grants falling more than 40% below the previous year’s levels. What’s more, the Trump administration’s proposed FY2026 budget calls for a nearly 40% cut in spending.

 

To explore potential impacts of such cuts, Azoulay and colleagues performed a “what-if” scenario analysis to determine how these cuts would impact downstream drug development. Azoulay et al. focused on “at-risk” grants – those that would have likely been cut in a 40% smaller budget from the years 1980 to 2007 – for small-molecule drugs. The authors found that among 557 drugs approved between 2000 and 2023, 40 had at least one patent directly acknowledging NIH extramural funding, and 14 of these were supported by at-risk grants. And, when considering research citations, 331 cite at least one NIH-supported publication, and 286 reference research funded by grants that would have been cut under a hypothetical 40% budget reduction. These findings suggest that a large portion of modern pharmaceuticals rely on publicly funded science, often through indirect pathways that provide critical background knowledge, methods, or foundational research. Moreover, the authors show that the drugs linked to at-risk research are often highly valuable, demonstrating that NIH funding not only underpins a substantial share of medical innovation but also supports drugs that are clinically and economically important.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aeb1564 

Article Title

What if the NIH had been 40% smaller?

Article Publication Date

25-Sep-2025

 

Revealed: How fungus-farming termites protect gardens from invaders

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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Some termites form symbiotic relationships with fungus. When harmful fungi invade their carefully cultivated crops, these fungus-farming termites fight back with the precision of skilled gardeners, a new study reveals, smothering them in soil clumps enriched with microbial allies that inhibit fungal growth. Fungus-farming termites, like Odontotermes obesus, maintain a vital symbiotic relationship with the fungus Termitomyces, cultivating it in specialized nutritional substrates called combs that provide both a reliable food source for the termites and an ideal habitat for the fungus. However, these nutrient-rich combs also attract invasive fungal weeds, particularly the fast-growing Pseudoxylaria, which can quickly overtake the crop if left unchecked. While Pseudoxylaria is typically suppressed in healthy combs under termite care, it rapidly spreads when termites are removed, suggesting a critical role of termite activity in maintaining their fungal gardens. While It’s thought that termites use microbial agents to manage these fungal weeds, while sparing their cultivated crop, the precise behavioral mechanism by which they achieve such selective control remains unknown. Through experiments exposing O. obesus to varying severities of Pseudoxylaria outbreaks, Aanchal Panchal and colleagues found that the termites employ a flexible set of behaviors to suppress weeds, adjusting their tactics depending on the severity of the invasion.

 

When faced with small infections, termites actively remove Pseudoxylaria from contaminated comb and bury it under soil clumps (boluses), which effectively isolates the harmful fungus in an oxygen-deficient soil environment, suppressing further growth. In the case of severe outbreaks, termites fully isolate infected portions from healthy combs and, if necessary, smother entire sections in soil boluses to contain the threat. Notably, the authors found that the soil boluses the insects use are not just barriers – they contain a diverse community of microbes, including termite-derived bacteria with fungistatic properties. Termites deploy these fungistatic boluses only when weeds threaten their gardens, not on healthy fungal combs. According to Panchal et al., this indicates that O. obesus has evolved a highly targeted defense strategy, enlisting microbial allies to selectively combat harmful fungi while sparing their beneficial crop. “The findings of Panchal et al. elucidate how microbial symbionts can be used as part of a multifaceted pest management strategy,” write Aryel Goes and Rachelle Adams in a related Perspective. “Efforts to understand the molecules involved, and their relationship to host fitness, may reveal beneficial microbes that lead to natural product discovery for medicine, agriculture, and bioremediation.”

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adr2713 

Article Title

Fungus-farming termites can protect their crop by confining weeds with fungistatic soil boluses

Article Publication Date

25-Sep-2025