There’s something so … insidious about vape smoke. Its sweetness belies its true nature.
Vaping, on the surface, seems a mild vice. Especially after decades of public awareness campaigns on the dangers of cancer sticks.
We were taught at school that cigarettes will knock years off your life. They’ll ruin your looks, taint your body with disease, and the smell will follow you everywhere, our teachers said. They’re incredibly addictive so don’t even try them once, they said.
Scary stuff.
Every year the Government hikes taxes on tobacco products. And every few years it introduces another measure aimed to reduce smoking harm: No smoking indoors. Large graphic pictures. Plain packaging. Ban on displaying products. A limited number of retailers. Raising the smoking age.
Then came electronic cigarettes. They look almost ... angelic in comparison with the cigarette devil, don’t they?
Gone are the most visible and immediate side effects of cigarette smoking. No more bad breath and lingering smell. No more begging for a lighter. No more stained fingers.
Instead, you’ve got a discreet little machine that you carefully fill with a bit of syrupy-smelling liquid, then you push a button and inhale the pleasant vapour.
So innocent. Or so it seems.
And that’s possibly a reason more young people are picking up the vice. Recent studies have shown 8.3 per cent of adults and 10.1 per cent of Year 10 students vape daily in New Zealand.
Ten per cent. Ten per cent of our 14 and 15-year-olds. That’s scary.
Because, let’s be real here, vaping appears innocent only when compared with the horrors we’ve been taught about tobacco. But vaping can still lead to health issues and addiction.
According to Harvard Medical School, there are worrisome health effects tied to vaping.
They include:
- The addictive nature of nicotine and its effects on the developing brains of teens and young adults.
- Accidental exposure to vaping liquid has caused acute nicotine poisoning in children and adults.
- Some substances found in vapour have been linked to an increased risk of cancer.
- The vapour can contain ultra-fine particles, cancer-causing chemicals, and heavy metals that can be inhaled deep into the lungs.
- Explosions and burns from some devices that have malfunctioned.
- The gateway to cigarette use.
- Potential negative consequences on a developing fetus.
Scary stuff.
But Cancer Research UK says there is no good evidence that vaping causes cancer and that potentially harmful chemicals found in vapes are generally far lower than those found in tobacco cigarettes.
The organisation’s stance is that vapes are not risk free but they’re less harmful than cigarettes and are a useful tool in aiding smoking cessation.
“E-cigarettes should only be used to help you stop smoking or to stop you going back to tobacco. Most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is addictive. If you have never smoked, you shouldn’t use e-cigarettes.”
The organisation says vapes are still a relatively new product and the long-term health effects are uncertain.
That’s the scariest part for me. Humanity seems to have a bit of a lackadaisical “safe until proven otherwise” attitude to stuff that otherwise gives us pleasure.
But even if, years down the track, researchers tell us that vaping is actually a (relatively) safe vice and we can all puff away with abandon, the addictive qualities of any controlled substance come with social risks — particularly crime.
The Government is introducing legislation to make vapes more difficult to access, including prohibiting the sale of disposable and reusable vapes within the next year, requiring child-safety mechanisms, replacing frilly flavour names such as “cotton candy” with more dull titles like “sweet”, and placing restrictions on where new vape retailers can open.
The moves are intended to combat the number of young people vaping, according to Health Minister Ayesha Verrall.
But the owner of a Whakatāne vape store that was ram-raided last week believes more attacks will happen when the new legislation comes into effect.
Yeah, that’s a possibility. When something addictive is made harder to access, some people will resort to crime to get around those restrictions.
But we shouldn’t allow that to hold us back from protecting our young people.
We don’t know the full scope of vaping’s health impacts yet and we shouldn’t allow a new generation of addicts to be created while we wait and see.
Our kids should not be guinea pigs.
Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.
