An alarming new report finds that a huge number of teens have taken up a new habit known as “dripping.” The research states that one in four teens who vape have used e-cigarettes for a different purpose than what they were intended for: making them create thicker clouds of vapor to give a strong throat sensation and intensify the flavors.

It’s the first examination of dripping among teens, and it involved surveying teens from eight Connecticut high schools in the spring of 2015. About 1,874 students reported having tried an e-cigarette, and 26 percent said they also tried “dripping.”

Male, white students who had tried more tobacco products and used e-cigarettes more often were the most likely to try dripping, according to the research.

How does dripping work? E-cigarette swork by heating liquid and creating vapor, which is then inhaled and then exhaled. Vaping uses the reservoir and wick of the e-cigarette in a controlled way, but some will try to bypass the process and use a more manual form of vaping to increase the amount of vapor.

“Electronic cigarettes (ECIGs) electrically heat and vaporize a liquid solution to produce an inhalable nicotine-containing aerosol,” reads an unrelated study about dripping published last year. “Normally the electrical heater is fed the liquid via an automatic wick system. Some ECIG users, however, elect to directly drip liquid onto an exposed heater coil, reportedly for greater vapor production and throat hit. Use of such “direct drip atomizers” (DDAs) may involve greater exposure to non-nicotine toxicants due to the potentially higher temperatures reached by the coil. In this study we examined nicotine and volatile aldehyde (VA) emissions from one type of DDA under various use scenarios, and measured heater temperature.”