E-Cigarette Use Costs U.S. Billions.

• Position: VAPING

Use of electronic cigarettes costs the U.S. $15,000,000,000 annually in health care expenditures--more than $2,000 per person a year--according to a study by researchers at the University of California-San Francisco School of Nursing.

"Our findings indicate that health care expenditures for a person who uses e-cigarettes are $2,024 more per year than for an individual who doesn't use any tobacco products," says lead author Yingning Wang of the UCSF Institute for Health & Aging.

The researchers based their estimates of health care costs and utilization on data from the 2015-18 National Health Interview Survey. Health care utilization includes nights in the hospital, emergency room visits, doctor visits, and home visits.

"Health care costs attributable to e-cigarette use are already greater than our estimates of health care costs attributable to cigar and smokeless tobacco use," says Wang. "This is a concerning finding, given that...