PORTLAND — While overall use of marijuana among Oregon youth has remained flat, the primary way they’re using the substance — vaping — has dramatically increased, according to an Oregon Health Authority analysis.

The findings, which were released on Thursday, adds to evidence that vaping is subjecting many more youths to addiction. New data shows one in four Oregon 11th-graders reporting vaping a nicotine product, with youths use of e-cigarettes, such as Juul, increasing nearly 80% between 2017 and 2019. Marijuana use changed dramatically as well, according to the data, with youths shifting from smoking marijuana to vaping.

Youth vaping of marijuana increased 295% — from 11% to 44% among 11th-graders using marijuana between 2017 and 2019 — even as 11th-grade overall marijuana use stayed constant at 20%. The data comes from Oregon Healthy Teens, a survey of middle- and high-school students that OHA administers every two years.

“This is alarming,” said Dr. Dean Sidelinger, health officer and state epidemiologist for the OHA Public Health Division. “It confirms what we’ve long known — vaping is putting a new generation at risk for addiction. These products can get young people started on using nicotine and marijuana, and it is easy to get hooked.”

OHT and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a survey the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention annually administers in partnership with states, both found that nicotine vaping products are most popular among children and young adults: 23% of 11th-grade students and 13% of young adults, ages 18 to 24, use nicotine e-cigarettes versus just 3% of adults age 25 and older.

About half of Oregon high school students who currently use e-cigarettes report they never smoked conventional cigarettes — not even one time.

In Oregon, youth vaping overlaps with use of conventional tobacco and flavored tobacco products, the OHT analysis showed. More than half of Oregon eighth- and 11th-graders who use tobacco use flavored tobacco. Roughly half of all youths who currently use conventional tobacco products started with vape products. Nearly two in five Oregon 11th-grade vape users also currently smoke conventional cigarettes.

A February 2019 study in the journal JAMA Network Open, one of the first studies to track youth e-cigarette users over time, found that young people who vape e-cigarettes are nearly three times as likely to start smoking cigarettes as peers who don’t vape.