Local health officials are warning about a troubling rise in teen vaping and young people so addicted to high-potency nicotine that they’re turning to cigarettes as a vaping-cessation device.
Numbers obtained by CBC News show more than 300 instances where public and Catholic high school administrators called enforcement officers because of teens vaping on school property, and 245 warnings issued to students for either vaping or sharing vapes with their friends.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg and doesn’t nearly show the scale of the problem, said Brandon Tingley, who heads tobacco enforcement at the Middlesex-London Health Unit, overseeing officers who go in and speak to students and lay charges under the Smoke Free Ontario Act, as well as a handful of young people who go into stores trying to buy vaping and tobacco products to ensure compliance.
“It hurts my soul to say that we’ve talked to some students who are using tobacco as a form of cessation from vaping because there’s less nicotine in a cigarette or a pack of cigarettes than there is in that vile substance that they’re using in the electronic cigarettes. It’s very scary to think about,” said Tingley.
“They’re marketed to students in a way that it’s easy for them to obtain them, use them and distribute them. It’s a battle at all angles. Without a doubt, tobacco and cannabis use are still prevalent, but the No. 1 complaint we get from schools is related to vaping.”
National figures show that about a third of high school students have tried vaping, and almost a quarter vape every day. That’s especially concerning because the high nicotine content in many vapes, agreed Linda Stabo, the health unit’s program manager of health system partnerships.
“There’s a misperception that these products are safe, so we have been countering some of that messaging for years,” she said. “But vaping tastes good, cigarettes don’t. With a vaping device, it’s a cool burst of air that hits the back of their throat along with a high kick of nicotine that sets their brain on fire, so they want to keep vaping, and they need to keep vaping. It’s an addiction.”
Some students complain they can’t go to the bathroom in their high school without having to step through massive clouds of vapour, and school administrators say it’s very difficult to catch students in the act. Some schools have removed bathroom doors to discourage vaping.
“If an educator walks into a room, the student doesn’t quickly need to decide, ‘Am I going to burn my hand? What am I going to do with this cigarette?’ said Tingley. “They could easily and discreetly hide the product, which is a huge challenge.”
Advocates push for efforts to minimize youth vaping rates
One school in the Thames Valley District School Board has had a vape detector since last year — Strathroy District Collegiate Institute. Officials with the board say they can’t afford more detectors, and their efficacy is still up in the air. A spokesperson for the London District Catholic School Board said the detectors would be piloted at several high schools this fall but refused to say how many or where.
Teens caught with a vape up to their mouth or exhaling a big puff of vapour face a $305 fine. “If they pass the vape around, that’s a $490 fine,” Tingley added.
But nothing works quite as well as talking to young people directly, Tingley said, and parents should start talking to their kids early about the harms of vaping.
The region’s medical officer of health called the rise in teen vaping “tragic.”
“Yet again, we’re dealing with an industry that has significant resources available to it to ensure that they’re capturing new customers with a highly addictive substance,” said Dr. Alex Summers.
“The health impacts of nicotine addiction and dependency are still poorly understood and likely more significant than we think. Creating a chemical dependency on a brain that’s still trying to figure out its way in the world is going to have negative impacts on mental health, anxiety, and other issues down the road.”
Health officials have previously tackled and brought down rates of smoking among young people, and are using the same techniques to tackle smoking, said Stabo.
“We have young people who will always be young people and want to try new things. They want to experiment, to tap into what appears to be cool online, and they want to try it themselves,” she said. “We need the general public to understand that vaping is not a benign substance.”
“We really need to look at this issue through a really complex intervention approach, where we have enforcement, education, awareness building and we need to figure out ways in which we can regulate the product to reduce health harms,” Stabo said.
While there are limits on the amount of nicotine and the flavours available in stores, some order vapes online and others go to stores that don’t comply with regulations, she added.
“They can go online, they’re not being asked their age, or it’s just filling a box that you can lie on, and those products are being delivered straight to their doors,” Stabo said.
Parents need to know what to look for, because many vaping products don’t look like a “drug delivery device,” she added.
They look like USBs or like lip gloss. “They’re designed to be discreet.”
