“Why Is It So Hard for Older Adults to Quit Smoking?” in AARP Magazine
It can be difficult to implement policies and messaging that protect young people from e-cigarettes while also finding ways “to bring e-cigarettes into the arsenal to help people quit. The challenge has been, ‘How can we do those two things at the same time?’” says Rafael Meza, PhD.
POSTED: Aug 4, 2025
CRST and CAsToR collaborated to present weighted prevalence estimates from analyses of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS, 2023). NHIS is an annual cross-sectional survey designed to be representative of the civilian noninstitutionalized US population and is a primary source of health surveillance data in the US. This brief presents results from the 2023 NHIS and includes estimated prevalence of ever and current use of commercial tobacco
POSTED: May 28, 2025
“Can Vaping Help You Quit Cigarettes? What Are The Risks?“ on NPR’s Science Friday
The harms of smoking cigarettes are pretty clear. Smoking causes cancer as well as heart and lung diseases, and it's the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. When it comes to vaping, or electronic cigarettes, the risks are a bit more tricky to parse, especially if you read media reports about them. The founders of Juul, the company that mainstreamed vaping in the early aughts, said they wanted to help people kick their smoking habits. But can vapes really help people quit? And how bad are they for you, really? And if you're addicted to vaping, what's the best way to stop? To answer those questions and more, Host Ira Flatow talks with one of the top researchers in the field, Dr. Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
POSTED: Feb 10, 2025
Flavored E-Cigarette Sales Restrictions and Young Adult Tobacco Use
Among young adults in the US, use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) rose from 5.4% in 2014 to 13.6% in 2022, while combustible cigarette use fell from 17.9% to 6.5% over that same period. The mean (median) expert believes that vaping’s effect on quality-adjusted life expectancy is 37% (25%) that of smoking. Assuming that either estimate reflects true risks, then regulating ENDS to reduce vaping without increasing smoking presents a key goal for public health policy. However, a corresponding regulatory mechanism—that is, a policy that reduces ENDS use without reducing smoking cessation or increasing smoking initiation or relapse—remains unknown.
AUTHORS: Abigail S. Friedman, PhD; Michael F. Pesko, PhD; Travis R. Whitacre, PhD JOURNAL: JAMA Health Forum.
POSTED: Jan 3, 2025
Improvements in cancer prevention and screening have averted more deaths from five cancer types combined over the past 45 years than treatment advances, according to a modeling study led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CISNET consortium, including CAsToR members Meza, Jeon and Holford.
POSTED: Dec 9, 2024
“Seniors, You're Never Too Old to Quit Smoking, Study Finds“ in U.S. News
“We have seen a remarkable decline in young adult smoking over the past decade. However, rates among older adults who smoke have remained stagnant,” said Thuy Le, assistant research scientist of health management and policy, who along with David Mendez, professor of health management and policy, and Ken Warner, professor emeritus, of health management and policy, found that quitting smoking after age 65 will add at least eight years of life for nearly 10% of people.
POSTED: Oct 22, 2024
The persistence of ENDS use among adults remained high in 2019-2021, but a larger fraction of dual users transitioned to ENDS-only use compared with 2017-2019. Because the fraction of cigarette-only users switching to dual use remained low, especially among older adults, the public health implications of this change are minimal.
AUTHORS: Andrew F Brouwer, Jihyoun Jeon, Evelyn Jimenez-Mendoza, Stephanie R Land, Theodore R Holford, Abigail S Friedman, Jamie Tam, Ritesh Mistry, David T Levy, Rafael Meza JOURNAL: Tobacco Control.
POSTED: Mon August 26, 2024
“The Potential Impact of Oral Nicotine Pouches on Public Health: A Scoping Review”
ONPs appear to be less toxic than cigarettes and deliver comparable nicotine, presenting an alternative for combustible product users, although key data are mainly available from industry-funded studies. Data from independent research is critically needed. Industry marketing of ONPs may encourage initiation in youth and situational and dual use in adults.
AUTHORS: Nargiz Travis, MScPH, Kenneth E Warner, PhD, Maciej L Goniewicz, PhD, Hayoung Oh, MPH, Radhika Ranganathan, MScPH, Rafael Meza, PhD, Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, PhD, David T Levy, PhD JOURNAL: Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
POSTED: Mon Jun 17, 2024
“Most Americans Are Quitting Smoking—Except For Those Over 65” in Time magazine
Public health campaigns and programs outlining the dangers of smoking aren’t really aimed at older adults, says Rafael Meza, an integrative oncologist at the BC Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver and the lead author of a new study on adult smoking. “In the U.S., smoking really has a generational pattern,” he says. Meza’s new analysis, published Dec. 1 in JAMA Health Forum, shows that while people ages 40 through 64 smoke the most, Americans 65 and above are picking up the habit in a way nobody else is. While the prevalence of regular smokers dropped to 15.2% down from 21.2% in a little over a decade for that middle-aged group, older adults saw an increase from 8.7% to 9.4% in the same time frame.
POSTED: Dec 7, 2023
CAsToR Junior Investigator Ke “Vicky” Xu, M.Sc.
CAsToR Junior Investigator Ke “Vicky” Xu, M.Sc., is a Data Analyst who studied Statistics and works with CAsToR MPI Rafael Meza at British Columbia Cancer Research Institute. She is interested in descriptive data analysis of tobacco product use across different socio-demographic groups, as well as multi-state transitional modeling that helps understand tobacco product transitions.
POSTED: Thu Jun 5, 2025
