In this same article, the tobacco-powered sources of nicotine use are down this in 2019 to 5.8 for high school students. It's up to 2.3 for middle school users, though.
e-cig (nicotine and some liquids to make it a vape) is up quite a lot; but, it looks like children are not converting from e-cig use to tobacco use, which was a fear that I had when I was earlier considering e-cigs.
My fear was basically that if enough people start using e-cigs and want to "graduate" to tobacco use, then over all tobacco use will increase. That does not seem to be happening in high school students.
It's definitely not good that a quarter of highschoolers are indulging in a highly addictive substance; but, I think there are other means of managing that than making the product illegal or tasteless.
Only if you count vaping as equal to "smoking cigarettes". The link you shared shows that smoking among that cohort in 2019 was the lowest it has ever been.
