Operation Parent Webinar: Teens, E-cigarettes and Vaping

Dr. Patricia Purcell shares information and talking points about vaping and e-cigarette use by teens that parents and guardians can reference. She is clear and uses language that we can call understand. The webinar below is an hour long but well worth a listen for any parent, guardian, grandparent or caregiver of youth.

More information about Operation Parent and their free resources for parents and guardians can be found at https://operationparent.org/resource-manager/

Vaping 101: Information for Parents/Guardians and Educators

We will post information on the ever-changing landscape of electronic cigarettes and dangers associated with vape use by our youth. We will share information and articles from trusted, verified sources that you will be able to review to be better informed. Youth who have parents/guardians who talk with them about substance use are 50% less likely to use substances. Talk, they hear you.

For Quick facts on the Risks of E-Cigarettes for Kids, Teens and Young Adults Click here.

 

Video added 2/21/20 at 5:00pm

We already know from a 2019 national survey of over 42,000 youth that 24.3% of 8th graders, 41% of 10th graders and 45.6% of 12th graders have tried vaping at some point in their lifetime, but why is this important? Why is it dangerous for them to experiment with vaping products?

Benzoic acid is an ingredient added to the nicotine during manufacturing. It is one of the components used in popular vaping liquirs which can “mellow” the flavor of the nicotine that is inhaled. During the manufacturing process benzoic acid is added to the nicotine to reduce the harshness when inhaled.

If you are reducing the harshness of nicotine, which is highly addictive, and youth are experimenting at a very high rate (12.2% of 8th graders, 25% of 10th graders and 30.9% of 12th graders reporting vaping in the last 30 days), this leads to an increased chance of nicotine addiction.

WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VAPING

In an article published by the Center for Disease Control, with content from the Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

If anyone can speak firsthand about the significant rise in e-cigarette use by kids, teens, and young adults, it’s someone who works with them every day. Lauren W., a high school teacher in Pennsylvania, often hears her students talking about using e-cigarettes. But when it comes to the dangers of nicotine and addiction for young people, she does not believe they really understand how dangerous e-cigarettes are for their health.

“I talk to them about the risks all the time,” she says, “and those talks reveal that they have never really thought about it.”

As someone who can influence young people, Lauren is doing what she can to teach them about the harms e-cigarette use can have on them. “They are always interested when I pull up research and start listing off findings,” she says.

WHAT EDUCATORS AND COACHES NEED TO KNOW

Young people are also more likely to pay attention if the adults in their lives who they trust and respect are willing to talk. Teachers and administrators can use health classes and assemblies this upcoming school year to invite students to ask questions about e-cigarettes. There are many e-cigarette prevention programs teachers can use in their classrooms to let students know about the risks of e-cigarette use.

WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE?

  • E-cigarettes have the potential to benefit adult smokers who are not pregnant if used as a complete substitute for regular cigarettes and other smoked tobacco products.
  • E-cigarettes are not safe for youth, young adults, pregnant women, or adults who do not currently use tobacco products.
  • While e-cigarettes have the potential to benefit some people and harm others, scientists still have a lot to learn about whether e-cigarettes are effective for quitting smoking.
  • If you’ve never smoked or used other tobacco products or e-cigarettes, don’t start.
  • Additional research can help understand long-term health effects.

CADCA Breakout Session: Put An End to ENDS- Youth Vaping and How Coalitions Can Fight Back

Using Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS), commonly referred to as vaping, is an emerging trend among youth across the country, and community coalitions are working hard to address it. National data suggests that youth past 30-day use of nicotine delivered via vaping devices roughly doubled from 2017 to 2018. This session provided an overview of the strategies in which DFC grant recipients are engaging around vaping prevention, including collecting data on attitudes and use, engaging youth, and building capacity within the community to shed light on this new trend. During this session there an opportunity for participants to share ideas on how to address vaping in their local communities and to discuss emerging findings on the impacts of vaping on youth.

Yearly reports published each February by Drug Free Communities across the nation had an increase of 28% when mentioning youth vape use from 17% of all reports in 2018 to 47% of all reports in 2019. This type of growth is backed by the Monitoring the Future Survey.

Key Strategies to Adress Youth Vape Use

 

 

  • Provide Information: providing information to youth, parents/guardians and adults who engage students at the school level will increase awareness of the dangers and risks associated with use.
  • Enhancing Skills: providing youth with the skills to avoid use is an important step but also providing adults with the ability to inform and educate youth with facts is essential.
  • Changing Policies/Consequences: changing disciplinary actions to match the changing landscape of vape use is key. Adding education components will provide students with the opportunity to be educated and informed regarding the decisions they make.

If you would like more information about ways you can address youth vape use please use the contact us form on the bottom of our homepage

CADCA Breakout Session: Vaping Prevention

#GearUp: Collaborating Around Vape Prevention Efforts Through Media and Policy

Through speaking with community members, school age youth, health providers and service agencies in Stokes we understand that vaping/e-cigarette use by youth is an issue. By attending this session we learned how to inform youth and parents/guardians about the dangers associated with nicotine use by vape devices. We were informed about best practices regarding sharing information to youth to help encourage them to make safer/healthier decisions.

Representatives from Muskegon Drug Free Community shared their success and challenges during their efforts to address vape use by youth in their area. Through their session we were able to gain knowledge on these best practices:

1) Know how to successfully implement coalition activities through social media practices, such as partnership development with local media sectors, and ways to leverage social media platforms.

2) Engage youth in creating messaging, leveraging partnerships and rallying around prevention efforts that result in community change.

3) Collaborate with key stakeholders to develop a universal anti-vape school policy that strives for an alternative to suspension.

For information on how you can talk to your youth about vaping or other issues use the contact us form at the bottom of our main page, through our Facebook page or TalkSooner.org.

 


  

UPDATE: Monitoring the Future: 2019 Survey of Teen Substance Use

We were able to take the information from the results of the 2019 Monitoring the Future Survey and compile it into charts that are easier to read and digest for parents/guardians and community members.

The results from the national survey allow us to see trends that may be impacting youth and young adults in Stokes County.

Monitoring the Future is an annual survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders conducted by researchers at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health. Since 1975, the survey has measured how teens report their drug, alcohol, and cigarette use and related attitudes in 12th graders nationwide; 8th and 10th graders were added to the survey in 1991.

42,531 Students from 396 public and private schools participated in the 2019 survey.  

N.C. Gets an F for Tobacco Prevention Efforts, says Advocacy Group

By Richard Craver Winston-Salem Journal Jan 29, 2020

North Carolina has once again flunked its tobacco-prevention evaluation, as graded by the American Lung Association.

The nonprofit group, in its annual State of Tobacco Control report, gave North Carolina a failing grade in all five categories it reviews: funding for state tobacco prevention programs, strength of smokefree workplace laws, level of state tobacco taxes, coverage and access to services to quit tobacco and minimum age of sale for tobacco products.

The report grades states and the federal government on policies proven to prevent and reduce tobacco use. Its common denominator is that “elected officials should do more to save lives and ensure all residents benefit from reductions in tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke.”

“With the youth vaping epidemic still rising, we may have lost an opportunity to make the current generation of kids the first tobacco-free generation.” said June Deen, the group’s director of advocacy.

The group said a significant portion of North Carolina’s F grades comes from “the federal government’s failure to enact policies called for in the report, such as increased tobacco taxes and stronger federal oversight of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.”

North Carolina’s excise tax on vapor products is 5 cents per fluid milliliter of consumable product — a rate supported by tobacco manufacturers when the law took effect in February 2015. However, the group stressed “the need for North Carolina to act to protect youth from all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, is more urgent than ever.” The report borrows from other anti-tobacco advocacy reports. North Carolina went from 42nd to 44th in terms of how much money it puts annually toward those programs, such as quit lines and public health marketing initiatives, according to the 21st annual “Broken promises to our children” report released in December.

“An investment in prevention is especially important given the skyrocketing number of youth who are vaping,” the American Lung Association said. The group said Congress needs to follow through on passing legislation to eliminate all flavored tobacco products.Otherwise, the group said, it is critical that states take that step through their legislature.

However, North Carolina’s heritage as a tobacco-growing state has made it challenging to ramp up funding for prevention initiatives.

Tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., agreed in 1998 to settle lawsuits that 46 state attorneys general brought over smoking-related health-care costs by paying those states at least $246 billion over 20 years. Some Master Settlement Agreement payments remain in place beyond 2018. Economists say most states have become dependent on the settlement money and tobacco excise taxes to fill general-fund gaps.