The prevalence of the use of e-cigarettes, or vaping, among school aged children has been on the rise across the country and Surry County has not been immune. Raising the national legal smoking age from 18 to 21 was hoped to offer some curb to the burgeoning practice of vaping but those effects have not yet materialized.
Surry County’s Office of Substance Abuse Recovery began this fall with an awareness and education campaign that was delivered to middle school students as part of the county’s Prevention Month and national Red Ribbon Week.
The message was that vaping is a dangerous health practice that is being marketed directly to kids their age. It warned bodies and brains that are still developing could be adversely affected by the chemicals found in vape products.
A Surgeon General’s study reported, “Nicotine is highly addictive and can harm the developing brain. The nicotine found in e-cig and other tobacco products can also prime young brains for addiction to other drugs.”
The American Cancer Society clarifies the nomenclature, “Use of e-cigarettes is often referred to as ‘vaping’ because many people believe e-cigarettes create a vapor.” E-cigarettes (vapes) do not contain tobacco, but many of them contain nicotine and are classified as tobacco products.
The growth of vaping has been accelerating in recent years. The 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey reported that more than 2.5 million teens use vape products. Of high schoolers who identified as users, “Nearly half (46%) report doing so on a frequent basis putting a new generation at risk for a lifetime of nicotine addiction.”
“The youth e-cigarette epidemic remains a serious public health threat driven by the actions of the tobacco industry to flood the market with cheap, youth-appealing flavored e-cigarettes while keeping brands already popular among teens easily accessible on shelves across the country,” the advocacy group Truth Initiative wrote in October.
Marketing to young people is meant to draw them into a new habit and is often based around fun or appealing sounding flavors. A vape that is touted as bubblegum or cotton candy flavored will be more appealing to young people than trying to discern what Camel Turkish Gold means.
The speed at which such an array of products has flooded the market would sound alarm bells in other categories. In June 2021 tobacco industry sales analysts reported 500 available SKUs, or unique bar coded products, in the flavored vape group. By March 2022 that number had climbed to 1,600.
Public health officials advocated at a 2019 White House meeting asked for a national ban on flavored vapes as a starting place to combat the growing trend of youth vaping. “All of the public-health and medical organizations were united on the request,” American Lung Association CEO Harold Wimmer said.
The United States adopted a law raising the federal minimum age of sale of all tobacco products to 21 that same year. President Donald Trump acknowledged at the time there was a vaping problem when discussing his plan to ban the sale of most flavored vaping products, “We can’t allow people to get sick. And we can’t have our kids be so affected. We have to take care of our kids, so we’re going to have an age limit of 21,” he said at the time.
Charlotte Reeves, outreach coordinator for Surry County’s Office of Substance Abuse Recovery, said that attempts to educate young people to the dangers of inhaling untested, unverified mystery liquids into their still developing lungs are underway. Vapes include unknown ingredients that can cause damage yet unknown to young bodies. Reeves also warned vapes may be a direct gateway to the use of other substances.
Educators are being armed with some new guidance as well. What smokers remember of sneaking off during fifth period history is not what smoking looks like today. Students can be puffing a vape in the hall between classes but without a cloud tailing them or the acrid smell of fresh smoke, none may be the wiser.
Even when students are caught, “Research shows that many educators don’t know what to do when students violate smoke- or tobacco-free policies and use tobacco products on campus,” Truth Initiative writes.
Suggestions informed by their research report “Discipline Is Not the Answer: Better Approaches to On-Campus Student Tobacco Use” outline a course to remediation that is not punishment. “Respond to students who vape with support, not punishment or suspension… which can cause even more problems at school, leading to lower test scores and graduation rates, among other poor outcomes.”
“The best way to help young people not use tobacco on school grounds is to help them stop using tobacco. Punitive measures will not help students quit. Students should be approached in a supportive way that focuses on encouraging them to quit using tobacco products.”
Combating some of the marketing messages will be needed as vaping is being presented as a stress relieving social lubricant that is healthier than a cigarette and comes in tasty flavors. All that is missing is a cartoon camel with a cigarette hanging from his lips and it could be 1988 again.
Another of the tactics used to promote vaping in all age groups is that it can be a stop smoking aid for those who are currently smoking.
To the ides of vaping as a tool to quitting, in their State of Tobacco Fact Sheet the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) warned, “There is no conclusive evidence that using e-cig/vaping helps someone quit smoking for good. The FDA has approved seven ‘quit aids,’ but e-cigs are not currently one of them.”
Tobacco usage among all groups has been falling, the American Lung Association reported that in the last five years cigarette smoking rates have fallen 23% in adults and 44% in youth. Since 1965 the rate of smoking in adults has dropped to 28.9%.
The FDA has authorized 23 e-cigarette products and denied more than 1.2 million others.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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