UC San Diego

Because COVID-19 is a respiratory and cardiovascular disease, understanding behaviors that impact cardiopulmonary health, such as tobacco use, is particularly important. While early studies suggested no change in prevalence of tobacco use as COVID-19 emerged, pandemic fatigue, shifting levels of COVID-19 transmission, and vaccine availability have all changed since the start of the pandemic. The current study examined whether time, COVID-19 surges, and/or vaccination status were associated with likelihood of daily and non-daily tobacco use over the first 24 months of the pandemic. Data were obtained from electronic health records of healthcare visits (n = 314,787) to four Southern California VA healthcare systems. Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicated that the likelihood of reporting both daily and non-daily tobacco use (versus non-use) increased over time. Daily and non-daily tobacco use were less common at visits that occurred during COVID-19 surges, as well as among veterans vaccinated against COVID-19. Our findings provide new insight into changes of tobacco use patterns and correlates across the first two years of this pandemic, and understanding these associations may facilitate understanding of health-related behaviors and inform clinical treatment of tobacco use disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic.