Vaping

When I was in high school, cigarette smoking was considered normal, even for teenagers. I smoked my first cigarette in tenth grade, right around my 16th birthday in 1996. Back then, not everyone did it, but more than half of America’s 10th graders (61.2%) had used cigarettes at least once; 30.4% of tenth-graders reported using them about once a month. By the time I began working in prevention thirteen years later, in 2009, that number had been reduced by more than half. Now, less than 10% of tenth graders have ever used a cigarette.

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Although they were initially advertised to adults who smoked cigarettes as being a healthy alternative to cigarette smoking, the attractiveness of the tech design and the flavored vape juices quickly led to popularity among non-smokers - and a growing interest among youth. My first year in prevention, we just didn’t know enough about the long-term effects of these things to say too much about their health risks. We could say some things, though: because vape juice usually contains nicotine, it’s still addictive. Because it goes into your lungs, there’s still a lot of potential harm that some of the unknown substances in vape juice could be doing there. (I mean, your lungs have a tough enough job as it is, right? With all the harmful chemicals in the air, your lungs have to filter out the oxygen, the only chemical your body really needs from this whole “breathing” process.
Everything else is a byproduct or a waste product, something potentially harmful to keep inside the body.)

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Although 2009 is a lifetime ago to you, for some of us it’s a short time indeed; we’ve learned both a lot and not a lot about vaping in that time. We now know that it is certainly harmful to the lungs to inhale the aerosol (vaporized liquid) from e-cigarettes, which contains chemicals known to cause cancer. The aerosol also contains tiny particles of heavy metals (like nickel and lead). We know that the flavorings in vape juice are sometimes made from chemicals linked to serious lung disease.

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Why? Because e-cigarettes haven’t existed long enough. Mass-produced cigarettes have existed for almost 150 years; the first e-cigarette in the United States was sold in 2006, just a couple of years after its invention in China5. So, while cigarettes have been deadly to long-term users for several generations, we won’t know for another generation or two just how severe the risk to long-term vapers can get. What we’re seeing already, though, is concerning enough that we strongly recommend anyone considering vaping weigh out the risks very carefully before making a decision. And for youth, we want to remind you again that while your brains are still developing, anything addictive poses a serious long-term risk to your mental well-being. 

In my recent prevention work, 15 years since those early days, I am relieved to see that most kids know that vaping is harmful to your health. Middle and high schoolers have frequently approached me and asked for tips and tricks to help their friends quit – or at least convince them that quitting would be a good idea. In my next post, I’ll share some of my answers to those questions!