Teenage Rampage
The United States and Canada media get into a tizzy over teenage use of electronic cigarettes
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by Dave Cross
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“Anna Kelly started smoking a year ago, at the age of 17. The Springfield High School senior originally tried traditional cigarettes...” begins Springfield’s State Journal-Register. The residents of this Springfield may not be yellow but the opinions displayed by the journalist certainly exhibit that hue. “...She transitioned to e-cigarettes after her friend bought one for himself. She bought her own, and now is a regular e-cigarette user at 18 years old.”
The entire structure of the piece assumes that nicotine is dangerous, as dangerous as heroin, plane crashes, alcohol overdoses and having mugs fall on your head from the cupboard while making coffee.
Maybe it isn’t that dangerous, maybe it is, as they write, a gateway. “But if teens are using them mostly as a gateway, are e-cigarettes harming more than helping? Should they even be smoking them at all?” Some reading the article might wonder if the journalist forgot all about the initial case study – Anna expressed a preference for vaping over smoking. Where is the gateway? Can it be nothing more than puritanical adults wish to deny life’s pleasures to teenagers?
“More Canadian youth are choosing electronic cigarettes over their traditional tobacco counterpart,” says the Canadian Medical Association Journal. (CMAJ).
Margaret Bernhardt-Lowdon, executive director of the Manitoba Lung Association is concerned. “We’ve never had a snapshot like this,” she said. She advocates a ban but we are left wondering why. She talks of banning vaping in public spaces as if this poses a danger to bystanders but research proves it doesn’t.
Canada already has a prohibition on nicotine products; Margaret wants to place extra bans on a product that is already illegal. She would like to see the eradication of a product that is far safer than smoking leaving Canada’s youth to experiment with a deadly yet lucrative alternative. Is there a fault in her logic here?
Canadians, like people the world over, have access to the internet and it is eCommerce that will put the kibosh on any plans to legislate the world of electronic cigarettes. How can the TPD be implemented successfully in the UK when vapers will simply begin shopping with non-EU based companies?
Time Magazine notes that North Carolina researchers “asked 11 teens between ages 14 to 17 who didn’t smoke to try to buy e-cigarettes online from 98 of the most popular Internet vendors.” Only five of these companies sifted out the would-be underage vapers. Clearly there is a problem here as most in the ecig world agree use in under-18s should be restricted – but it leaves the issue of what should be done with the 10% of youths who experiment with smoking; is it right to prohibit them from accessing a much safer substitute?
Time mention the biggest fear being that “they contain nicotine, which is addictive.” But we know from research and announcements by Professors West and Farsalinos that the level of addiction for ecigs is comparable with that of coffee.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous vape companies to develop content for their websites.
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