Your vaping questions answered

The Foundation recently held a webinar for a group of parents wanting to learn more about the harms of vaping and how to protect their young people. Foundation Chief Executive Letitia Harding and Māori Community Liaison Sharon Pihema discussed what they have learned from their work in vaping harm advocacy and education. Here is some of the advice they shared:

Has there been any research on the harm vaping can cause?

Letitia: There’s a lot of research now around the effects vaping has on the respiratory system, the circulatory system and the heart. We try to upload the most recent clinical papers onto our 'Don’t Get Sucked In' website, so that’s a good source of information. All of the research we share is from respected, peer-reviewed medical journals. It’s also important to note that medical societies across the world are of the same voice. They believe that vapes need to be highly regulated and that they are harmful to the lungs.

What is the best way to help kids understand vaping and addiction is NOT harmless?

Sharon: It’s a hard one. When I’m talking with young people, we spend quite a lot of time looking at the marketing and the advertising of vapes. That’s a real eye-opener for our young people when they see how blatant, obvious and manipulative all of those marketing strategies are. It helps them to start connecting the dots between the product, the nicotine, how addictive it is and the impact it’s having on them and their friends and family. I like to approach it in a non-judgmental way, just giving them that information so they can take it home and talk about it with their whānau.

How do we help teens recognise when they have become addicted?

Sharon: Often it’s not until they have to quit or they have to go without nicotine for a while that they actually notice how addicted they are. When you reach that point where young people feel safe enough or confident enough to open up honestly, they will tell you how many vapes they use in a week and where they are getting it from. They will talk about having to have one as soon as they wake up or when they go to sleep.

What is the very first thing to do if you suspect your child is vaping?

Sharon: I can only answer from my own experience with my daughter. We suspected it for a while, but it wasn’t until she got caught at school that we could sit down as a whānau and talk about it. It took a while to get through all her defensive walls until we could finally get the truth about just how bad her vaping was and how much she was struggling with it. Our first reaction was to blame our daughter, get angry, and throw all the vapes out, but we then did some research. Once we understood the whole addiction cycle, it changed our mindset as how we as parents could be supportive and helpful. So my advice would be to keep having conversations, keep trust and communication open, and look for local support if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that does have support for rangatahi.

Where can you get support for young people who want to quit vaping?

Sharon: That’s the missing chunk of whole equation - that support is really lacking.

Letitia: It’s worth looking at the local Quitline service in your area, because although there’s not a national strategy around this and there is a big gap, there are some service providers who are doing some good work.

How do I prepare my child? She is 10 and I am worried she will be exposed to it soon.

Sharon: I’ve done workshops with Year 5 and 6 students because they are being exposed to it and some are starting to vape. It’s definitely worth having those conversations with children of that age. Get hold of some good evidence-based information and keep your conversation simple and age-appropriate. Give them some strategies or things they could say if they are in that situation when they’re offered a vape.

What more can we do to encourage the government to make stricter rules around vaping?

Letitia: There do need to be stricter regulations in place. At the moment, it does feel like trying to capture the horses after they have already bolted. The Government is trying to put in the regulations, well after they were needed. What we can do collectively, is keep our voices out there and make sure decision-makers know we don’t want any more specialist vape retailers in our communities, we don’t want high nicotine levels, we don’t want storefront advertising. We need to keep on pushing for greater regulation in this space to protect young people and future generations.

For more teen-friendly information on vaping, visit our website: www.dontgetsuckedin.co.nz