AUGUSTA — Public health advocates who hope to lower the numbers of Maine youth who are using e-cigarettes, or vaping, will urge lawmakers Tuesday to support a bill that would ban the products on school grounds.

The 1 p.m. hearing Sbefore the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee comes on the heels of Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ budget address, where she said her budget includes using $10 million from the state’s tobacco settlement fund to better curb youth tobacco use in Maine, as well as vaping.

The bill is being offered as increasing evidence shows youth vaping appears to be contributing to a flattening of teen smoking rates, which had previously been in steady decline. Last spring the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data from a national survey of 20,000 middle and high school students that found about 8 percent of high schoolers said they had recently smoked cigarettes in 2018, and about 2 percent of middle schoolers did. Those findings were about the same seen in similar surveys in 2016 and 2017.

The survey also found that about 2 in 5 high school students who used a vaping or tobacco product used more than one kind, and that the most common combination was e-cigarettes and cigarettes. Also, about 28 percent of high school e-cigarette users said they vaped 20 or more days in the previous month – nearly a 40 percent jump from the previous year.

Smoking, the nation’s leading cause of preventable illness, is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths each year. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bans the sale of e-cigarettes and tobacco products to those under 18.

E-cigarettes are generally considered better than cigarettes for adults who are already addicted to nicotine. But health officials have worried for years that electronic cigarettes could lead youths to switch to smoking traditional cigarettes.