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A new report from the University of Michigan and backed by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse has some good things to say about the state of teen drug use in the country. It seems that use of alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders are all continuing to fall. Meanwhile, electronic cigarette use appears to have surpassed that of conventional cigarettes among teens. Despite what anti-smoking alarmists might say, this could prove to be a very good thing.

The study is part of an ongoing effort to track the use and abuse of various substances ranging from alcohol and Ritalin to crack cocaine and bath salts. You can check out the bulk of the results right here.

From 2013 to 2014, the percentage of 12th graders that smoked daily dropped from 8.5% to to 5.7%. In the last four sets of data (going back to 2011), this was the first to be a statistically significant drop from the year before. The same trends can be seen throughout the data as it pertains to smoking.

Meanwhile, this was the first year the study looked at electronic cigarette use at all. Even then, the only metric researchers collected was what percentage of the teens had used an electronic cigarette at least once in the previous month.

The rates of past month e-cig use were much higher in 8th and 12th graders than past month smoking. In 8th graders it was more than double and in 12th graders it was roughly a quarter more. Among 10th graders, past month smoking was higher, but not by very much.

This does not necessarily prove that electronic cigarettes are more popular than tobacco cigarette even though that’s the interpretation many choose to go with. It is distinctly possible, however, it is also possible that trial is much higher among e-cigs while on-going use could be far less. After all, recent studies suggest that tobacco cigarettes are far more addictive.

Still, if electronic cigarette have become more popular and the go-to product for a bit of nicotine and rebellion, this could be a very good thing. Studies already show that electronic cigarettes are far less harmful and far less addictive. Some researchers have said that if everyone that smokes used electronic cigarettes instead, the smoking deaths per year in the US alone would drop from more than 400,000 a year to somewhere around 4,000 a year. That would all have to start with getting teens to use e-cigs instead of smoking.

These stats suggest that exactly that might be happening.