There’s lots to like in the latest Hawaii Youth Tobacco Survey. Cigarette smoking among middle-schoolers and high-schoolers continues to decline, fewer students report being exposed to secondhand smoke in vehicles and homes, and few smokers under 18 are able to purchase cigarettes at stores.

The alarm bells go off when it comes to electronic cigarettes, though, which are increasingly popular among adolescents and teenagers. With a state law to restrict sales to minors now in effect, the onus is on parents to learn about the risks of these devices and to persuade their children not to take up the addictive, expensive habit.

Stricter enforcement of existing restrictions also have a place in stemming this tide, but the most influential deterrent is to teach young people to make smart choices about their own well-being so they avoid being exploited by an industry that considers them easy marks. For any product that comes flavored as bubble gum, cotton candy and chocolate cake is surely designed to attract children as customers, no matter what the makers claim.

And customers they have become, according to the biennial survey, which found the use of e-cigarettes in Hawaii has quadrupled among public middle-school students and tripled among public high-school students. In 2011, 1.8 percent of middle-schoolers surveyed and 5.1 percent of high-schoolers had ever tried e-cigarettes. In 2013, those figures rose to 7.9 percent and 17.6 percent, respectively.

Moreover, Hawaii students are experimenting more with the e-cig devices than are their peers in the continental United States, according to the survey, which is conducted every two years among public school students in grades six through 12 by the state health and education departments, in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

E-cigarettes, also known as electronic smoking devices, are battery-operated devices through which users inhale nicotine, flavorings and other solutions. While commonly referred to as "vaping," health officials say discharge from the devices is not actually water-based vapor but an aerosol that contains chemical particulates.

Hawaii’s state law banning sales of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18 took effect only last July, so we’ll have to wait until the next student survey to assess its impact; the law expanded the existing prohibition on sales to minors of conventional tobacco products.

Hawaii County’s law is even stricter, limiting tobacco sales, including e-cigarettes, to people 21 and older.

But the current survey indicates that it will take more than legal restrictions and government action to tackle this problem. For one thing, many students said they didn’t buy their own tobacco products, and, more poignantly, that adults in their lives had not warned them against smoking, including the electronic version.

Less than half of all students — 45 percent among middle-schoolers and 33 percent among high-school students — reported that their parents had talked to them in the past 12 months about the importance of not using any type of tobacco product. Such outreach by doctors, dentists, nurses or other health-care professionals was even lower, according to the survey.

That jibes with what Tonya Lowery St. John, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health, sees in the field: "When we go out and talk to kids about e-cigarettes, nine out of 10 have no idea that it’s bad for them."

It’s up to parents, doctors, teachers, coaches and other trusted adult role models to get up to speed on e-cigarettes — which can easily be mistaken for ballpoint pens and overlooked at home or on campus — and to teach children that they should avoid these products just as they do regular cigarettes.

Adolescence is a time when faddish behavior takes hold. When the fad involves nicotine, though, it’s not so easy to quit once the cool factor wears off.