Category Archives: Vaping

A guilt-stricken teen was forced to confess shed been vaping after a vape shed thrown away set the house ablaze and left the family homeless.

Mom Heidi Johnson was downstairs with her four-year-old son and a friend when the smoke alarms began to go off at around 7.15 pm last month [April 15th].

The carer went upstairs to check them and was horrified to be faced with flames and plumes of thick black smoke coming from her 16-year-old daughters room.

Racing downstairs and ushering her loved ones from the house, the mother-of-three called the fire brigade who arrived at 7.30 pm.

Its believed the lithium in the battery of a dead cherry cola-flavored vape, which had been binned as it had run out, sparked the devastating blaze.

Her teenage daughter, who had nipped to a shop with a friend, was horrified when she returned home to discover the house had been ruined and shamefacedly admitted the vape was hers.

Heidi is sharing her ordeal to warn about the dangers of vaping and encourage the installation of more bins for proper vape disposal

Shocking pictures show the property and all their possessions covered in soot forcing the children to live with family members while the 37-year-old lives out of her car with her four-year-old dog Bubbles.

Now Heidi is sharing her ordeal to warn others about the dangers of vaping and encourage more places to install bins where they can be properly disposed.

Heidi, from Batley, West Yorkshire, said: I was just in the living room and my little boy and my friend were in the kitchen when the fire alarms started going off.

Now and again the alarms go off and theres no problems.

I checked the kitchen one and it wasnt flashing red, neither was the living room one.

I thought it was probably just a dickie [alarm].

When I got to the top of the stairs, it was just black. I couldnt see anything.

There was a bit of a light coming out of my daughters bedroom. I pushed the door back and it was all up in flames.

It was the week after my daughters 16th birthday, so all her birthday things were gone, shes got nothing

I never expected it. When I saw it I screamed.

My friend and my son were at the bottom of the stairs. I told them to go, I said get out, get out! and pushed them next door.

It went so quickly, it was so scary seeing the flames.

It was the week after my daughters 16th birthday, so all her birthday things were gone, shes got nothing. Wed just decorated her bedroom and bought her a new telly.

Shes devastated, absolutely heartbroken. Its just a shock. I dont think Ive even accepted what has gone on.

The fire brigade turned up and at first they thought it was a gas leak.

It turned out it was my daughters vape, but it had been there for ages. She said it was dead.

It was just in the bin in her room. She said it had been in there all day.

The thing is, my daughter wasnt even allowed vapes in the house.

Ive already banned vapes from my house, but I cant put it on her. Its just one of those things that has happened. I know shes taken it worse, because it was her vape. She blames herself for it.

Weve been left completely homeless, its really affecting my kids

The fire brigade said it was the lithium in the battery that had leaked out of the vape and caused the fire.

Heidis rented house is now ruined beyond repair, as not only was the upstairs destroyed by the smoke and fire, but the downstairs suffered water damage too.

Her children are staying with family members, while she sleeps in her car with her dog every night until they can find alternative accommodation.

The single mom says she feels heartbroken and that she has been left with nothing due to a vape.

Heidi said: I cant even go in the house, even if I wanted to get something out, its so dangerous.

Its sickening, Im 37 years old and Ive got nothing apart from my car, its horrible.

The thing is my daughter wasnt even allowed vapes but its just one of those things that happened.

Theres no proper disposal bins for them, theyre just getting thrown left, right, and centre

Its all gone, it burnt everything. The kids have no toys or everyday things.

Weve been left completely homeless, its really affecting my kids. I just want to be normal and back with my kids.

Its reality. Im just plodding along and trying to do what I can do for my children, but it just isnt working.

Everything just seems to be getting worse. Its hard, Im trying to deal with one thing and then another happens.

Grateful no one was hurt, Heidi hopes that in sharing her story she can highlight the potential dangers of vapes and the importance of properly disposing of them.

Heidi said: Ill survive. Im here and alive. Just dont vape. At the end of the day, it isnt worth it.

When youre in my situation and youre living in the car with your dog separated from your kids. Its all because of a vape.

They dont even have any warnings or proper disposal places for them.

Something so dangerous and theres no proper disposal bins for them, theyre just getting thrown left, right, and centre.

You dont think its going to happen because its dead and its useless but its taken my whole house out.

Im so scared of them now, I never want to see one again.

My daughters trying to keep going but shes suffering, all my kids are and Im not even able to be around them at times like this. Its just crazy.

It could happen any time, anywhere and theres nowhere to get rid of them. There hopefully will be soon.

I just dont want this to happen to anyone else. You dont think it can happen, I never even knew it could happen.

You can donate to Heidis fundraiser here.

The post Teenage girls vape started fire that burned down her family home appeared first on Talker.

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A teenage girl's vape started fire that burned down her family's home - The Georgia Sun

Published 11:15 am Saturday, May 27, 2023

You cant stop what you dont know, is Jermaine Galloways motto and tagline.

Galloway, a towering 6-foot-9 former collegiate basketball player, worked in Idaho law enforcement for 18 years and currently resides in Texas. He has extensive experience in alcohol and drug compliance and enforcement, and currently devotes most of his time educating professionals and communities throughout the U.S. on prevention of drug and alcohol abuse.

At the Atrium Stanly Family Health Education Center, Tall Cop, as Galloway is known to many, spoke Monday evening to participants in the Stanly County Schools Community Health Fair about national and local trends that often lure young people into substance abuse.

Its important to take note of this information now, he said, noting that most studies in this field are two to three years behind current trends when released.

Jermaine Galloway

In a fast-moving slide presentation, Galloway illustrated and explained numerous ways that distributors of some seemingly-innocuous products are able to legally sell items that often contain cannabis and cannabis derivatives, synthetic hallucinogens, alcohol and caffeine.

Whats worse is these items are marketed toward children and teens, he said.

Vaping, according to Galloway, is a common gateway through which youngsters often begin a process that leads them to progressively stronger substances.

If you want to get a kid to use a drug, put it in a vape, he said, noting that the wide variety of vape flavors is an attraction to many young people.

In some areas, children as young as second and third grade have been found to be vaping, Galloway noted, adding that most vaping brands contain nicotine, and that vape pens containing cannabis often utilize propane and butane, which the user breathes in along with the flavored substances.

To parents, Galloway delivered a stern advisory.

Please dont let the words Well, at least theyre just vaping come out of your mouth, he said, adding that an addiction to vaping is often more difficult to break than one to harder drugs.

While vaping is a common first step toward substance abuse, numerous other items containing dangerous substances are easy to find.

Magic Mushrooms and Diamond Shrooms are examples of substances that look like snacks, but contain hallucinogens in small, but potentially dangerous amounts, he said, showing a slide of the packages, whose bright colors and design would easily capture a youngsters attention.

As an example, Galloway displayed a redacted e-mail that he had received from a school resource officer at a Kentucky middle school, noting that a number of students there had been fainting over a short period of time. Upon investigating, it was determined that many students in the school had been using such substances.

Fainting and seizures, along with panic attacks and anxiety, can result from use of these items, he said.

Alcohol abuse remains a major problem among youth, yet marketers often target that demographic in their sales efforts.

According to Galloway, items such as hard seltzers or sparkling seltzer beers are often marketed to young people as low-carb, low-calorie alternatives to beer and other alcoholic beverages.

But, look at the alcohol content of these drinks, he said, noting that hard seltzers often are about 5 to 6% alcohol, and seltzer beers up to 7%.

A beer is usually around 4%, Galloway said.

While mixtures of cannabis and alcohol are illegal, Galloway noted that some manufacturers are able to circumvent these regulations by mixing alcohol with cannabis substitutes.

Its equivalent to weed, but its not weed, he said.

Galloway is critical of states that have legalized such substances, and says that in his experience, legalizing them only exacerbates the problem.

When you legalize it, you make it more available, he said. So, if its more available, kids will find a way to get their hands on it and use it more.

On a positive note, Galloway noted that most national department store, convenience store and grocery store chains refrain from selling such items.

Theyve got a reputation to uphold, he said, so most of them dont stock these items.

The businesses that parents should beware of are establishments such as smoke shops or others with no affiliation, said Galloway.

In closing, Tall Cop again appealed to parents to be aware of what their children are consuming.

Every drug has some kind of side effect, he said. And no drug is ever completely safe.

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'Tall Cop' says 'gateway' drugs can be found on store shelves - The ... - Stanly News & Press

According to Material Focus, two vapes are disposed of in the UK every second. The number of people vaping worldwide is predicted to have reached a record high having risen from seven million in 2011 to 55 million in 2021.

While the Government is actively using vapes even giving out vaping kits as part of their target to make the UK smoke-free by 2030, vapes are proving to be even more damaging to the environment, due to fires from embedded lithium batteries as well as the leaching of corrosive electrolytes and heavy metals. Indeed, research published by Material Focus in December 2022 identified that over 700 fires in UK waste trucks and on waste sites were caused by batteries that hadnt been disposed of correctly.

There are currently calls for bans on single-use vapes and for vapes to be made into a separate waste category, with their own solution within the WEEE Regulations.

Arguably the main problem with vapes is that there is no established system for their collection and disposal. Millions of single-use disposable vapes containing valuable resources like lithium end up in landfills across the world. Its estimated that approximately 1,200 electric vehicle batteries could be made from the lithium lost in discarded vapes and e-cigarettes in one year.

Scott Butler, executive director of Material Focus, told a joint investigation by the Bureau of Investigate Journalism, Sky News and the Daily Telegraph in July last year that vapes that go to landfill are responsible for dumping plastics, poisons, nicotine salts, heavy metals, lead, mercury, and flammable lithium-ion batteries into the environment.

He continued: The challenge is that people dont really think about what a vape is made of, but what it does for them.

Other impacts include littering, the aerosol transmission or leaking of toxic substances from e-liquids, the leaching of heavy metals and the leaking of corrosive electrolytes from batteries.

Due to the public and environmental health risks, local authorities and governments around the world are considering legislation options for controlling the sale and disposal of vapes.

Glasgow Councils Environment and Liveable Neighbourhoods Committee called for the Scottish government to introduce legislation to ban the sale of single-use vapes earlier this year. Australia also announced a ban on the sale of all non-prescription vapes earlier this year.

In the UK, a Disposable Electronic Cigarettes (Prohibition of Sale) cross party bill was put forward by Conservative MP Caroline Johnson in February, but is not scheduled for a second hearing until 24 November. The UK parliament website says, however, that the House is currently not expected to sit on this day and the bill is therefore not expected to be taken.

In this years budget, UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt also rejected proposals to tax disposable vapes to discourage underage vaping; the Government is instead considering a ban on candy-flavored vaping liquids alongside a clampdown on marketing that could appeal to the young, with a consultation into youth vaping launched in April this year.

The Governments reticence to introduce legislation around vaping has been put down to the opportunity that vapes present in moving the population away from traditional cigarettes. Mark Oates, director of the campaign group We Vape, told eCigIntelligence that while he didnt think the industry was doing enough to address environmental issues, it would be a great shame if [the government] removed this opportunity to take people away from cigarettes.

The solution, commentators suggest, is to focus on recycling schemes and the introduction of policy around recycling and waste collection. In the case of no blanket ban, stakeholders are calling for extended producer responsibility (EPR) for vape and e-cigarette producers, with some producers having already proactively created or signed up for recycling schemes.

There are examples of several recycling and collection schemes for vapes currently set up around the world. Private waste disposal companies GAIACA and TerraCycle offer services which dismantle, clean, and convert vaping devices into raw materials for use in new products in both New Zealand and Canada. In the US the vape industry has launched recycling schemes such as DotMod, Shanlaan, Dovpo and Vinn.

In the UK, vaping company FEELM has launched a UK-wide recycling scheme in partnership with Royal Mail and waste management firm Waste Experts. From the end of this month, Customers in London, Birmingham and Manchester will be able to return their used single-use vapes to a participating retailer or through the post. The waste items will then be recycled while the remaining e-liquid will be safely disposed of. To incentivise uptake, for every ten devices deposited FEELM will provide customers with a free vape.

Vape retailer Totally Wicked has also signed up for a national vape collection service launched by Veolia last month and VPZ stores have announced its own recycling partnership with WasteCare.

While recycling schemes are a step in the right direction, a huge hurdle still to overcome is customer messaging. Many people lack an understanding of the effect of vapes on the environment.

Despite being better for human health than traditional cigarettes, iIn the absence of proper management and legislation, single-use vapes and e-cigarettes are more hazardous than single-use plastics because of the chemicals they contain, yet many vape users are unaware of the dangers.

As Material Focus Scott Butler made clear, vapes and e-cigarettes tend to be looked at in terms of public health. The industry has, however, been slow to launch campaigns which look to expand consumer awareness of the environmental issues associated with vapes and e-cigarettes.

Gateshead Council in Tyne and Wear has been ahead of the curve, launching a campaign to teach residents about the correct disposal of vapes and dangers posed by incorrectly disposal in household waste or recycling bins.

Councillor Linda Green, Chair of the South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership, told Circular Online in February: I really dislike the term disposable, as they are anything but.

All vapes contain a battery, and if you throw them in your bin and they are collected by our crews, these batteries can be damaged during processing and spark, setting fire to any combustible materials around them.

The question for the industry is whether a blanket ban can be avoided by sufficiently curtailing the environmental damage of vapes through consumer communications and proper recycling while still reaching the Governments target of a smoke-free UK.

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Vape wasteland: Looking beyond public health - Resource.co

Across the 2010s, largely thanks to the tobacco industry, vaping kind of got a bad rap. However, when it comes to cannabis, vaping has quickly become one of the industry go-tos for many folks' means of consuming THC. A lot of that is owed to the work of longtime brand Storz & Bickel and its suite of high-end, medical-grade vaporizers.

Designed to be smoother and generally better for your body than traditional smoking methods, the brand's vapes represent some of the top options in the weed industry and they're lauded by fans around the world. So what's the catch? Well, they're pretty expensive, for one. And that's enough to scare off plenty of people.

However, I got my hands on one of the brand's most popular, top-end offerings, the Mighty+, to see if it actually lives up to the admittedly significant hype. Over the course of several weeks, I turned to this device as my daily vape with the hope of determining once and for all if the Mighty+ is worth its similarly mighty price.

After getting hands-on with the Storz & Bickel Mighty+ for a few weeks, I finally understand the online forum hype that surrounds this particular device. Setup was a breeze (thanks to clear, simple instructions sadly somewhat uncommon among other vapes), the device worked brilliantly right out of the box (it was even charged up), and the whole process from first turning it on to finally refilling it (and back again) was as easy as it was enjoyable. From a user experience perspective, the simplicity of this device might just be its primary strength, followed shortly by its consistency and precision. It also hits smoothly and deceptively hard.

The device is certainly large probably best for at-home use and not so much for taking on the go and it looks more like a piece of industrial sci-fi equipment or maybe even a walkie-talkie, but that also lends to its discretion and, frankly, I like that it isnt easy to misplace. I was also initially skeptical of the price given that the exterior is made from plastic, but after using it (and learning that its a special heat-resistant plastic around a ceramic-coated heating chamber that gives off virtually no heat, even at the highest settings), I think these materials were the right choice to keep the device at a manageable weight. All told the Mighty+ was a true joy to use, even among the other top-rated vapes Ive had the pleasure of trying.

Admittedly, I was a little intimidated by the thought of using the Mighty+ for the first time. I had seen the device in action, but never actually put my hands on one despite a longstanding desire to try it out. However, getting it all ready to go was a simple matter the first time (and every time after that), thanks to clear instructions included with the device. Furthermore, the steps are brief and pretty intuitive: open the chamber, fill it with flower, secure it and hit the power button; wait a few moments for it to heat up and youre ready to go. Of all the vapes Ive tried, save maybe for disposable pens (which are often as wasteful as they are unreliable), this might actually be the easiest one to use. And that curve sticks with every use from there on, never increasing in difficulty or tediousness.

The kit also came with a USB-C power cable for simple, straightforward charging, as well as replacement filters, o-rings and even a little brush to clean out the chamber when it's time to repack it. These are all minor additions that make a pretty big difference in the overall user experience. Furthermore, replacing any of the aforementioned things is also a simple matter, aided by further instructions included with the vape. Why more brands dont include clear, concise instruction sheets, I do not know but Storz & Bickel makes it clear why this is such a vital part of customer service (theres even a support page on the brands site in case you need further help or misplace your instructions).

Every step of using this vape, from first unpacking it to cleaning it out the 100th time, is a simple matter. And that makes a tremendous difference in the overall experience. I am not exaggerating when I say this might be the easiest vape to use, especially on the higher end of the pricing and quality spectrum.

Sean Tirman

While it definitely falls somewhat in line with the above section (specifically in regard to user-friendliness), it needs to be said that one of the bigger joys of using the Mighty+ is the consistency and precision of the heating element. With just a simple push of the power button, the device will warm to the same exact temperature as it did the time before and the time before that. You dont have to fiddle with it if you dont want to and youll never be unsure as to whether it is fully heated or not (the display shows the temperature youre heating to, as well as the current temperature and vibrates when they match, for good measure).

This is important not only for simplicitys sake but to ensure that youre getting the same pull of your cannabis every single time. In fact, the only real way youre going to mess that up is through user error like fiddling with the temperature or neglecting to swap out your old, burnt-up flower. As the Mighty is certified for medical use, this all makes sense and, honestly, I wish it was more common among other vapes.

The very first thing youre going to notice about the Mighty+ is how big it is. Were talking BIG roughly the size of a glasses case or a modern walkie-talkie and definitely larger than my iPhone (maybe more like 2-3 iPhones stacked together). Yes, it is still small enough to qualify as portable to most, but youre really going to need a bag of some kind like a backpack or sling bag if you want to take it with you anywhere. Truthfully, I just dont see this thing making it into my pockets at any point.

Sean Tirman

The good news is, at least for users like myself, that it doesnt have to be super portable to be worth it. Its industrial-meets-sci-fi appearance lends itself well to discretion, which is ideal for home use and, while larger than other vapes, its size makes it easy to move it from room to room on an as-needed basis and youre probably not going to lose track of it, as you might with pocketable pen vapes. Combine that with the tech and overall experience and it more than makes up for its lack of outside-the-home portability. Still, if you were looking for something to stash while you head out into the world, this one might not be the best option for you.

It needs to be said that the Mighty+ (the device I used for this review) is actually a newer, updated version of the original Mighty. While these devices are almost identical in appearance (size, shape, etc.), the Mighty+ benefits from some fairly significant quality-of-life improvements, including a quicker charge time (up to 80 percent in just 40 minutes, as opposed to 2-3 hours for the standard edition), USB-C charging (the standard uses DC), quicker heating (60 seconds, as opposed to 70-80) and a few other smaller details.

Having used the Mighty+, Id definitely recommend the upgrade, even considering the price difference ($399 compared to the standards $349). Its not that the standard version is bad by any measure, its just that these slight differences do really go a long way toward the overall experience. Go big or go home, as they say.

If you like the Storz & Bickel tech and style, but youre just not sold on the size of the Mighty+, weve got good news: the brand has a much smaller unit (roughly half the size) called the Crafty+, which was specifically designed to be more pocketable. It doesnt have the same battery life, but thats the trade-off for portability.

Id also be remiss in my duties if I didnt mention the Pax Plus, the brands newest offering (and our top overall vape pick), which is super easy to use and offers a better overall user experience than previous generations (like the Pax 3). Furthermore, if youre just not feeling the style of the Mighty+ and youre a fan of sharing, the DaVinci IQC makes for an excellent choice. Finally, if you're not into vaping at all, but you still want a means to smoke your weed from the comfort of your home, I'm a very big fan of the Honest Capsule Water Pipe, which just so happens to be our top bong pick.

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Storz & Bickel Mighty+ Review: Is This Top-Tier Vape Worth Price? - Gear Patrol

Vaping in Chatham-Kent among students is double the provincial average.

Chatham-Kent Public Health officials are concerned the smoking rates here are higher than the provincial average.

And its killing people.

Jeff Moco, youth engagement co-ordinator for CK Public Health, said the most recent statistics indicate the rate of tobacco smoking in the province for people aged 15-plus is nine per cent. Here in Chatham-Kent its at 13 per cent.

Moco, in his report to the board of health, said smoking is estimated to be responsible for the death of 220 Chatham-Kent residents a year. Of those deaths, 92 are cancer-related, 63 are respiratory, 62 are cardiovascular and two are diabetic-related.

For the first time that I can really remember, Ontario Public Health has put a number on the burden smoking has put on our society, he said.

Whats more, tobacco smoking, Moco said, is responsible for 766 hospitalizations a year, and 1,723 emergency department visits annually in Chatham-Kent.

These smoking-attributable outcomes make up 19.4 per cent of all deaths, 9.4 per cent of all hospitalizations, and 4.4 per cent of all emergency department visits in Chatham-Kent, he stated in his report to the board of health recently.

As for vaping, Moco said provincial figures from the Ontario Student Drug and Health Survey indicate that in 2021, 15 per cent of students had vaped in the past year.

Local figures, with the most recent available from 2019, are much higher.

Moco said statistics from the Lambton-Kent District School Board show that 32 per cent of high school aged students vaped at least once a month.

With that figure, and the fact the highest adult age group for smoking locally is the 20-44 category at 23.2 per cent, the primary targets for smoking cessation efforts are teens and young adults.

This is a burden we all experience. This is preventable. It is our mission to help make a difference in this area. This is unsustainable, he said. We need to really, really focus on prevention; preventing a new generation of addiction to nicotine.

Dan Drouillard, a public health nurse, said the support for people looking to quit smoking has historically been quite fragmented in C-K.

The only tools weve basically had are some online programs, mail-out models, and they are quite limited in their success and what they can provide.

Drouillard said CK Public Health has partnered with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) to use CAMHs STOP program.

This allows anyone without a family doctor in Chatham-Kent to get 26 weeks of free nicotine replacement therapy, as well as individualized counselling, he said. Were working on bringing this not only to Chatham, but to some of the outlying communities.

Due to the addictive nature of nicotine, Public Health officials arent expecting a 100-per-cent success rate. Far from it.

We want people to quit smoking, but our goal is to increase quit attempts on people aged 20-45. That will have the most impact, Drouillard said. People sometimes need to have multiple attempts to be successful. So getting people to try to quit is the most successful means.

Moco said it is difficult to grasp why the municipality has smoking and vaping rates above the provincial average.

In the past, people made a link between lower educational achievement and socio-economic status having a relationship with tobacco use, he said, alluding to the fact smoking rates were higher among the less educated and lower income groups in society. Vaping is more of a cultural phenomenon.

Vaping does differ from tobacco use, and some turn to it to escape cigarette smoking. But Moco said its not as safe as users may think.

Its not water vapour. The latest research is about 800 puffs per month on regular nicotine device has people reporting about the same number of respiratory issues as people who smoke 15 cigarettes a day, he said. Right now, Im dealing with people who do 800 puffs a week.

Young people kind of underestimate the addictive properties of these devices.

However, the federal government has issued information that vaping is safer than smoking tobacco in some ways.

Vaping products produce only a small fraction of the 7,000-plus chemicals found in tobacco smoke, as well as lower levels of the potentially harmful ones. Unlike cigarettes, vaping products do not produce tar or carbon monoxide, among many other chemicals, the Government of Canada website stated.

Furthermore, nicotine by itself does not appear to be a carcinogen.

While there are risks associated with nicotine, such as addiction and/or physical dependence, nicotine itself is not known to cause cancer. In contrast, cigarette smoke contains many disease-causing chemicals, including many that cause cancer, as well as heart and lung diseases, the federal website stated.

It did acknowledge the addictive nature of nicotine, however.

Link:

C-K smoking, vaping above provincial average | The Chatham Voice - Chatham Voice

By Siba Jackson, news reporter

Thursday 18 May 2023 05:53, UK

The number of children trying out vaping has risen by 50% in the past year as campaigners call for a crackdown to "stem the tide of child vape experimentation".

Experimental vaping among 11 to 17-year-olds in Britain increased from 7.7% to 11.6%, the data showed.

While the number of children who admitted trying vaping once or twice has roughly doubled in the past nine years, from 5.6% in 2014 to 11.6% this year.

The figures are based on a survey of 2,656 young people conducted in March and April this year by YouGov for charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

They will be submitted as part of the government's call for evidence on measures to lower the number of children who vape - but also ensure e-cigarettes can be accessed by adults who want to stop smoking.

When asked why they vape, 40% of children surveyed said they just wanted to give them a try, with 19% admitting they wanted to join in with others and a further 14% saying they liked the flavours.

Although it is illegal to sell vaping devices to people under 18, there are numerous social media posts from teenagers discussing flavours such as pink lemonade, strawberry, banana and mango.

It follows earlier warnings from experts that the new generation of disposable vapes - which are known as "puff bars" and contain nicotine - have flooded the market.

The use of disposable devices among children who vape has soared from just 7.7% in 2021 to 69% in 2023, the research found.

They are most commonly bought at corner shops, followed by petrol stations and online.

'Child-friendly promotion' of cheap and attractive products

An increased number of children said they were aware of vaping promotions in shops, rising from 37% last year to 53% this year.

They also noted adverts for vaping on buses and social media platforms, with almost half of those surveyed citing promotions on TikTok.

Some 29% saw them on YouTube, 28% on Instagram and 24% on Facebook, the research found.

ASH chief executive Deborah Arnott said: "We need to stem the tide of child vape experimentation and the government's investment in a crackdown on illegal underage sales of vapes is a vital first step.

"But enforcement on its own won't do the trick without tougher regulation to address the child-friendly promotion of these cheap and attractive products.

"The evidence is clear, government needs to take strong action to prevent the marketing of vapes to children."

Dad Geoff Worsley, from Abergele, North Wales, launched a petition entitled Stop Children Vaping - More Regulation Now, which has received more than 100,000 signatures.

He is calling on the government to introduce tougher regulation immediately.

"Parents like me up and down the country are calling on the government to act to protect our children from vaping as well as smoking," Mr Worsley said.

"More funding for enforcement is a good first step, but it's not enough.

"Vaping is safer and better for smokers than smoking, but it shouldn't be promoted to children.

"Regulations are needed to prevent vapes being openly sold in prominent positions within shops, in brightly coloured packaging and sweet names attractive to kids."

Read more: Government unveils plans for 'illegal vape enforcement squads'More than four million Brits use e-cigarettes - but 350,000 have never smoked

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Misconceptions over vaping

ASH said fears that vaping is leading to a new generation addicted to nicotine are not justified by the current evidence.

The data showed most of the 20.5% of young people who have ever vaped have only tried it once or twice, the charity said.

Some vape less than once a week and others no longer do so.

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Just 2% of children surveyed said they vape daily.

Some 63% who tried vaping once or twice had never smoked.

But 71% of those who currently vape have tried smoking.

Professor of tobacco addictions at Kings College London, Ann McNeill, said a "well-funded communications campaign" was necessary to address "growing misconceptions" over vaping.

"These misconceptions are likely to encourage children to believe that they might as well smoke as vape, and discourage adults who smoke but have never vaped from taking up the government's 'swap to stop' offer (using vapes instead of cigarettes)," she said.

The new data showed no significant change since last year in the number of children smoking - which dropped from 4.8% to 3.6% in 2023.

The children who say they currently vape rose slightly from 6.9% last year to 7.6% this year.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: "It's already illegal to sell vapes to children and we are exploring further ways to tackle youth vaping through our newly launched call for evidence, which will look at the appearance and characteristics of vapes, the marketing and promotion of vapes, and the role of social media."

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Number of children trying vaping rises 50% in a year in 'tide of experimentation' - Sky News

E-cigarettes

Rise of disposable e-cigarettes has focused regulators around the world on what they fear is an explosion of vaping among young people

The vaping industry turns 20 this year, but Ira Simeonidis fears the golden age of e-cigarettes is already wafting away. Its a bit destroyed, says the organiser of Hall of Vapes, Europes largest vaping trade fair, held in Stuttgart this month.

His festival once drew more than 20,000 visitors, who attended talks, partied with DJs and browsed rows of exhibits by renowned designers showing off their latest mods, elaborately crafted devices for inhaling nicotine and other substances of choice.

It was for professional and passionate vapers, Simeonidis says. A community thing, to get together, drink beer, vape and see each other once a year.

But no more. While the festival was suspended for two years during the Covid-19 pandemic, the vaping world transformed. Markets around the world have been flooded with mass-produced disposable vapes, and a product that was once the province of speciality stores now fills the racks of corner shops, mobile-phone accessory stands and booths hawking tourist tat.

The number of designers exhibiting at his fair more than halved this year, Simeonidis says. There were no concerts, and many of his stalls were taken up by companies selling disposable technology. Theyre cheaper and its catastrophic for the environment with their lithium batteries, he laments. Also, there are the kids.

The rise of disposables has not only upset vaping purists. It is has intensified the focus of regulators around the world on what they fear is an explosion of vaping among young people, including school-age children, enticed by dark marketing of the products by social media influencers and kid-friendly flavours like crme brle, sour sherbet and Swedish fish.

Data on the surge is still emerging, but a survey of British children found the proportion who vape more than doubled in the year to 2022, while the use of disposables soared by 600%. Both those trends were largely among children who were already smokers, though studies from Australia, New Zealand and the US suggest more significant numbers of teenagers who vape in those countries might have never touched traditional cigarettes.

Another way to measure the explosive growth of disposables is the flood of candy-coloured cartridges that now scatter the surroundings of many universities and schools. A guy who picks up litter told me he thought they were highlighters and students were getting very studious in the parks, says Freddie Dawson, a Dublin-based editor at Tamarind Intelligence, a firm that tracks the industry.

You just need to walk down the street and see what [vapes] young people are using its always, always going to be disposables.

Even as debate continues over whether vapes are a life-saving tool to wean smokers off cigarettes, or an avenue for the nicotine industry to hook a new generation of addicts and they may be both concern over teenage use and the environmental toll of the devices is driving a new wave of regulation around the world.

Australia has announced that it will impose the strongest restrictions of any developed market, completely banning recreational vaping while limiting the sale of the devices to pharmacies and only with a doctors prescription.

Other countries are unlikely to go that far, Dawson says, but many are tightening their own regimes, inching closer to treating vapes the way they do cigarettes. The Netherlands banned flavoured vapes this year, while France says it could prohibit disposable vapes by the end of 2023. In Ireland, children under 18 can legally buy vapes from any store a loophole the Irish parliament is moving to close.

New Zealand has implemented a world-first generational smoking ban, preventing anyone currently aged 14 and under from legally buying cigarettes for the rest of their lives. More Kiwi adults vape (8.3%) than smoke (8%) according to the latest data, but as elsewhere, that growth is particularly strong among young people. Vaping rates among 14- to 15-year-olds have tripled, and legislators are spooked.

As some doctors and health groups call for a tougher stance, New Zealands government is re-examining its regulations. Associate health minister Ayesha Verrall, who has fronted many of the smoking changes, admitted in January that youth vaping rates are too high and the government need[s] to strike a better balance.

The UK is holding an awkward pose, trying to curb what one expert has claimed is an epidemic of use by children, while at the same time offering vape starter kits to English smokers in recognition that its own commissioned research says vaping is not danger-free, but poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking in the short and medium term.

Estimates of the number of people who vape around the world vary wildly, from 40m to more than twice that many, with the majority thought to be in rich or upper-middle income countries where, even with the imposition of new duties, vaping is still cheaper than smoking heavily taxed cigarettes.

But as the price of vapes has fallen, the devices have proliferated in less wealthy countries such as South Africa, Malaysia and the dozens of others where regulations are nascent, and lawmakers are starting to voice similar worries over their use by adolescents.

In China, where most of the worlds vapes are manufactured, flavours other than tobacco were banned in 2022, in recognition of their apparent danger to children though exporting those same flavoured products to the rest of the world is still permitted, and booming.

India was four years ahead of Australia in banning vapes outright, but its experience raises another question for lawmakers: how effectively can vapes be regulated? A survey published this year of young Indians found more than one in five had vaped at least once, despite the ban, with another fifth intending to try it in the next year.

The sale of e-cigarettes is rampant, and its sale by home deliveries and through the internet is extensive, says Monika Arora, a vice-president of the Public Health Foundation of India. Our work with school students is showing theyre experimenting from a very young age, class 8 [age 13-14] onwards.

Governments are likely to confront similar challenges as they seek to claw vapes back from the hands of young people. Ban specific flavours, for example, and manufacturers may tweak their recipes slightly to circumvent the rules. Prohibit vapes completely, and the black market is likely to live on as it does for any drug. Its a game of whack-a-mole, says Dawson.

Enthusiasts may believe the golden age of e-cigarettes is over. But the vaping era, with all the fraught questions it coughs up, is only beginning.

This article was amended on 17 May 2023 to clarify that Australias tough measures against recreational vaping have been announced but are not yet law. Also, the embedded world map has been updated to reflect recent legislation banning public vaping in Taiwan.

Additional reporting from Tess McClure

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Vaping boom and bust: from bans to starter kits, how the world is responding - The Guardian

ALBANY Almost a fourth of high schoolers in New York are vaping inhaling nicotine or the marijuana component THC through an electronic cigarette a sea change from two decades ago when a quarter of students smoked traditional tobacco cigarettes.

Schools across the state are being forced to invent ways to stop the growing trend, which is easier to hide because the smell and look of tobacco smoke is gone, while trying to get students to understand that nicotine is still addictive no matter how it's ingested.

While the mode of inhaling is different, school officials are up against what feels like the same enemy: marketing that suggests vaping is cool, delicious (with dessert and fruit flavors) and totally safe.

The electronic cigarette, which is commonly called a vape, vape pen or mod,can be smaller than a lighter. Some look like aUSB charger or pen. Theyre so tiny that administrators report some students will take a hit during class and then try to hide their device.

Avape pen works by having a battery inside that heats up liquid and turns it into a mist. While there is a visible smoke from exhalingvape, it tends to dissipate faster than traditional cigarette smoke. It does, however, have an odor depending on what kindof vape it is.

(School administrators can search a student if they have reasonable cause, such as a sudden mist cloud appearing over the students desk.)

One in 10 middle and high school students nationwide say they vape regularly, according to the annual youth tobacco survey run by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But it's worse in New York, where 22 percent of high school students said they usevapes, according to a 2020 survey.

Vaping has nearly replaced cigarettes. Traditional smoking among teens is at an all-time low in the state. In New York's last survey, only two percent of high school students said they smoke cigarettes regularly a 91 percent decline in the youth smoking rate since 2000, when 27 percent of high school students said they were regular smokers.

Catching students with vapes is so difficult to stop that schools have reverted to what they used to do to crack down on smokers: Theyre locking bathrooms.

InScotia-Glenville, a rotating selection of bathrooms are opened at the high school each day. A hall monitor is posted outside the unlockedbathrooms andthe rest are locked. At Shenendehowa, a parent reported that her high school son was patted down by a monitor before he could enter the bathroom, to make sure he wasnt bringing in a vape.

InBallston Spa, administrators installed vape detectors in February. The detectors, placed in the bathrooms, look like smoke detectors. They send an email alert to administrators when they detect nicotine vapor, marijuana vapor or loud noises that sound like destruction. Then the administrators plays back the video from a camera outside the bathroom to determine the possible culprit.

Customers must be 21 to buy avape in New York, and the state banned the sale of flavored vapes in 2020. But administrators say they are still commonly confiscating fruit-flavoredvapes in schools. Online, they can still be bought on Amazon and other websites, many of which do not require buyers to prove their age.

Its a nightmare for administrators who see a new technology repeating the marketing that cigarette companies used for decades to get customers addicted.

One of the really distressing things is theyre so clearly marketed to kids, saidScotia-Glenville High School Principal Peter Bednarek, referring to the fruit, candy and dessert flavors.

Nearly allvape liquid has nicotine, except for some of the THC liquids, according to tests cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. THC is a main component in marijuana. But when the CDC asked adolescents about a popular vape brand, two-thirds of them didnt know the brands liquid had nicotine.

Vapes with THC are now sold legally to those 21 and older in New York. But unlike nicotine vapes, which are sold in gas stations and corner stores, obtaining cannabis vapes from a dispensary requires a person to have their license scanned.

Bednarek can remember when he had to stop underage cigarette smokers, who often believed smoking wasn't that bad. Now its happening again, he said.

This generation of teenagers, in my opinion, is fairly health conscious. They view this as a healthy alternative, he said. They would not have so universally switched over from smoking cigarettes if they did not see it as somehow lesser of a problem. I think many of them think it is not addictive.

Vaping can lead to lung injuries, with symptoms like coughing and shortness of breath, similar to the effects of smoking, according to the CDC.

The vapor is also not harmless. It often contains heavy metals and a chemical that is known to cause lung cancer, according to theCDC.

InWatervliet, school administrators are trying to get that message across when they catch a student vaping. On the first offense, the student can be assigned to do a research project about the health effects of vaping. The project must be presented to their parents, teachers and administrators.

Ballston Spa has tried that, too.

Education is key, said SuperintendentGianleo Duca. But someone who unfortunately is addicted to it, its not going to help.

They try to get those students into cessation programs.

Vaping marijuana has also become popular, he said.

Were now seeing more THC, and its such a high concentration of THC, he said.

InScotia-Glenville High School, the school resource officer will help test vapes, Bednarek said, adding that many of the vapes he confiscates have THC.

Students atScotia-Glenville who get caught with a nicotine vape are usually suspended for a couple days; if the vape has marijuana, the suspension starts at five days.

But testingvapes has led, somewhat predictably, to another problem.

They get flushed down the toilet,Duca said. They clog it, cause all kinds of maintenance, its a huge nuisance.

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New York schools struggle to contain teen vaping - Times Union

Health Analysis

Posted: May 17, 2023

New national data shows the number of Canadian teenagers regularly using e-cigarettes ranks among the highest in the world, and experts say a lack of action from the federal government and the widespread availability of flavoured vapes is fuelling a growing crisis.

The latest results from Health Canada'sCanadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey, which surveyed 61,096 teenagers in grades 7 to 12 from nine provinces between September 2021 and June 2022, found that 29 per cent of Canadian students had ever tried an e-cigarette.

That number is down slightly overall in Canada, from 34 per cent in 2018-19, but is higher in older age groups with 41 per cent of students in grade 10 to 12 ever having vaped.

Regular use of e-cigarettes also continues to be widespread in Canada, with 17 per cent of students having used an e-cigarette in the past month, down slightly from 20 per cent in 2018-19, but is again higher in grades 10 to 12 with over 24 per cent being monthly users.

Daily vaping rates wereeight per cent across all students surveyed and close to 12 per cent among those in grades 10 to 12 which experts say are some of the highest ever reported globally.

"The numbers have confirmed that Canada has one of the highest youth vaping rates in the world, especially as it relates to daily vaping," said David Hammond, a public health professor at the University of Waterloo and a leading Canadian youth vaping researcher.

"We've essentially plateaued at historically high levels of daily vaping this is maybe the best indication out there that we're in for a long haul of regular youth vaping we've crossed the threshold of this being a fad."

WATCH | Australia cracks down on youth vaping asCanada stalls on national regulation:

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The numbers are higher than they were five years ago, when just 10 per cent of students had used an e-cigarette in the past 30 days and 11 per cent reported daily use in 2016-2017 signalling a growing problem showing no signs of slowing down.

The new youth vaping survey data also partially predates the widespread availability of disposable vapes that came onto the market last year and hold thousands of pre-loaded puffs, don't require refilling or cartridges and are linked to a surge in youth vaping.

"We're very concerned by the long-term issue that e-cigarette use by teenagers continues to be very high unacceptably high," said Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society.

"And we need the federal government to move immediately to ban flavoured e-cigarettes, a factor that is contributing to these high rates."

When asked what flavour they preferred, the survey showed 63 per cent of students in grades 7 to 12 who vaped in the past month had used a fruit flavour most often.

"There is no doubt that flavours are a very big part of youth vaping they appeal to kids, they're one of the reasons why they start trying vaping in the first place, and fruit flavours and candy flavours are a big part of that," said Hammond.

"The main reason adults vape is to help them quit or not to die from smoking flavours has a much bigger relative influence in youth vaping than it does for adults."

In contrast, youth cigarette smoking rates have continued to drop significantly in Canada with just 14 per cent of Canadian high school students reporting ever having had a cigarette, down from 19 per cent in 2018-19, and only one per cent smoking daily.

"We have seen over time some decreases in youth smoking. That's because of high taxes, high prices, plain packaging and menthol bans," Cunningham said.

"But unfortunately, overall nicotine use when you include both smoking and e-cigarettes, is going up We have an enormous problem, a new generation is becoming addicted to nicotine and we need government action immediately to respond to that."

The federal government sounded the alarm in June 2021 over a "rapid increase in youth vaping in Canada" and proposed changes to the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act to regulate the sale of "desirable flavours" helping drive the rising use among teens.

But two years later, as experts have noted, Canada still has some of the highest rates of youth vaping in the world and little action has been taken to regulate flavours at a national level.

"Health Canada is aware ofand very concerned about the high rate of youth vaping in Canada," a spokespersonsaid in an emailed statement to CBC News,adding they are still reviewing feedback from their public consultations on flavoured vapes, whichended in September 2021.

Vaping has been marketed as an effective way to quit smoking, but e-cigarettes have never been approved as smoking cessation aids in Canada.

The federal government's proposal to restrict e-cigarettes flavours such as cereal milk, cotton candy, "unicorn milk" and "dragon's blood" was expected to help make vaping products "less appealing to youth" while still giving adults trying to quit smoking some flavour options.

But experts and health advocates say Health Canada seems to have shelved the proposal, walked away from further regulating flavours that appeal to youth and left it up to the industry and provinces to take action.

In the absence of national regulations, multiple territories and provinces have taken action, with Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Quebec now banning the sale of most e-cigarette flavours, in an effort to curb youth vaping.

Health Canada did create new regulations on the amount of nicotine allowed in e-cigarettes, setting a maximum nicotine concentration of 20 milligrams per millilitre as of July 2021. But it has not enforced any regulations on flavours.

"The reason we're not seeing much lower rates of vaping in those provinces, is that the flavour restriction is not having any effect on their access," said Cynthia Callard, the executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.

"It's only with federal action, that the provincial restrictions will be effective It's deeply disturbing that Health Canada is effectively sitting on its hands while this problem continues at such a high level."

Adam Miller Senior Health Writer

Adam Miller is a senior health writer with CBC News. He's covered health and medical science news extensively in Canada for over a decade, in addition to several years reporting on crime, politics and current affairs throughout Asia.

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Canada has some of the highest teen vaping rates in the world, new data shows - CBC.ca

SPEAKER 1: Welcome to Justice Today, the official podcast of the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, where we shine a light on cutting edge research and practices and offer an in-depth look at what we're doing to meet the biggest public safety challenges of our time. Join us as we explore how funded science and technology help us achieve strong communities.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: Hello and welcome to Justice Today. We are talking about vaping today because it's not what you think. My name is Frances Scott. I'm a Program Manager in the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences here at the National Institute of Justice. And I'm joined today by Dr. Michelle Peace. Dr. Peace is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Forensic Science at Virginia Commonwealth University, and she is a founding faculty member of that department. Dr. Peace, welcome.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Well, hello, Dr. Scott. Thank you for having me today.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: So, you were one of the first to begin researching e-cigarettes and vaping since their rise to popularity in the U.S. What prompted your interest in this research topic?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Thank you for that question, because it's really a story of developing relationships with undergraduate students, and I love telling this story. So, electronic cigarettes, you know, they have a long history in the United States actually, but the modern electronic cigarette really didn't hit the United States until roughly 2006. And so the devices were really niche products. And so they weren't really widespread like we think about them today. And so before they came to the United States, they actually made their rounds around the rest of the world. And so they were really popular in other marketplaces. The Europe--European marketplace, you know, is, you know, where they really caught on before they caught on here in the States.

And so I had an undergraduate student who was studying abroad as part of her bachelor's degree. And she comes home, and we have an advising meeting, and she has been studying in Europe, and she comes into my office and she's super excited and she says, "Dr. Peace, we really think you need to study these things called electronic cigarettes." And I had no idea what she was talking about. And so, right, while shes chatting, Im Googling, and shes talking about how pervasive they are. Everybody is vaping and its fun and it's cool. And so, you know, I was really frank with her, and I said, "Well, why do I care, right? As a forensic toxicologist, why do I care about how people consume nicotine? We had a conversation about that and, you know, and I just rested in it. This was probably 2011, 2012. And, you know, I'm a little bit of a slow thinker. And so one day it just dawned on me, oh my heavens, people are going to be able to manipulate the devices, and if they can manipulate the device, then they're going to put whatever drug they want into them.

So we actually started trying to collect some preliminary data and recognize that, yes indeed that was going to be true. I reached out to a number of colleagues who work in crime labs and just to say, "Hey, are you guys testing these things called e-cigarettes?" And for the most part, nobody was, except for one lab that said, "Yeah, we're--we are collecting them over in a shoebox." I said, "Do you mind running some of those for me to see if there's anything of interest in them?" And so he did, and there it was. So that's how--that was all preliminary data that we put into our first grant to the National Institute of Justice.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: And we are at the--at the NIJ are very happy for that conversation and--and proud to have funded you through the years and to have been, you know, with you on the forefront of this research.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: I appreciate you--I appreciate you seeing this when, you know, we felt as though it was--it didn't have a snowball's chance, right? On a hot day, so we appreciate that the NIJ really took that risk.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: So, before we dig into the--our discussion on your research, can you explain vaping to our audience? I think we all think we understand it, but I think there are some misconceptions that you could clear up for us. How does it compare to traditional smoking?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah, I think--I appreciate starting with that conversation. There's--because I do--I think you're right, there's some misconceptions and frankly some mythologies that have been promoted about what vaping is. And so I'll start talking about the traditional cigarette, because when you think about a traditional cigarette and that you are lighting that, it's combustible, there's, you know, it--there's fire. And so that you--you're still generating something that's called an aerosol. And we think about that in terms of its smoke, but it's really an aerosol. And aerosols are made up of millions of tiny droplets, and those droplets have different sizes. Well, the same thing happens with an e-cigarette.

Um, so vaping uses a device called an electronic cigarette that is made up of a number of important components that no matter what that e-cigarette looks like, all of the components exist. So the most significant component is called the coil. And that coil is typically metal, and it heats up to roughly, depending on the settings, 250-1,000 degrees Celsius, so it gets so, so hot. And that coil is in touch with what we refer to as the e-liquid. There are some industries that call them e-cigarette formulations. We just refer to them as e-liquids. And that e-liquid is made up of chemicals, and they're made up of common chemicals that are called propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin. They're commonly known as PG and VG. And in the PG and VG are other chemicals. So, of course, our pharmacological agent, you know, in most instances as nicotine, but also lots of flavoring compounds and solvents are also in that e-liquid.

So when that coil gets really hot, it immediately vaporizes that e-liquid. When it hits the air, it pulls water out of the air, and in that process, millions of tiny droplets are formed. So, the mythology is that, well, vaping is just, you know, water vapor and that's mythology, that's an incorrect assumption, that's a misconception. Yes, it's pulling water out of the air, but the--that aerosol cloud still has all of those chemical components that was in the original e-liquid plus other chemicals that are formed when those chemicals hit that heat and they degrade. So there's a--there can be a complicated chemical profile inside of that aerosol cloud as well, that the consumer is inhaling.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: And that someone walking behind them inhaling their cloud is also inhaling now, you know, without intending to, right?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah. You know, there's some interesting and good research happening right now, not in my lab, but, you know, with other investigators, in which they're evaluating the nature of that secondary--what we refer to as secondary smoke, right? It's not smoke, it's an aerosol cloud. And so secondary exposure is important to appreciate and to understand. I think what's also interesting is that there is some good research happening with tertiary exposure, meaning that when that aerosol cloud lands on objects, furniture, clothing, right, there's a tackiness associated with it; that's because PG and VG are sticky. And so, right, so there's definitely some concern that people who have a tertiary exposure are also getting exposed to whatever that pharmacological agent is. And, you know, there are certain bodies, certain people who are really concerned about children being exposed to nicotine through a tertiary exposure, right? Because even nicotine is toxic.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: That's fascinating. Thank you for that explanation. So most of your research has involved, as you said, those other interesting things, drugs, other than nicotines, in that e-liquid. Can you--I know there's a lot, can you summarize just some of your findings and, kind of, that research path?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah. So, one of the things that we didn't fully appreciate when we started was that there wasn't a lot of research, there wasn't a lot of data, as to how the devices work and how effective are they, and certainly, there wasn't any data that really compared the devices head to head. So I don't want to say there was none, you know, there's been aerosol research at institutions for decades. And some of the most important aerosol research is--some of it's here at VCU, some of it's University of Maryland, some of the most important aerosol research. So it wasn't like we didn't know anything, but this thing that's called an electronic cigarette felt new. So we had to collect a lot of data just to figure out how did the devices work so that we can then figure out how to manipulate them.

So one of the--one of the studies that we first started, right, because you got to figure out also, well, how do I test what--how do you test an e-liquid? Like what is that going to look like in the instrument? So we just started buying a bunch of e-liquid products and we started noticing that what was on the label was not what we found in the bottle. And so, that became--it was at first interesting, and I thought, Is this widespread? So we started getting e-liquids in from friends all over the nation and--that--my question was: they need to be made in the United States. So it looked like we were the first ones that really published on this is what's in the U.S. marketplace. And at the time, the e-cigarette industry was unregulated, and so when you have an unregulated industry there's always issues around is the industry going to adhere to certain quality assurance standards?

So we really demonstrated that in the early days that there was--what was on the bottle--what was--what was in the bottle was not how it was labeled. We've demonstrated that there's thousands of potential flavoring compounds and those flavoring compounds are in solvents, and those solvents are sometimes in the final products that the consumers are using. So we found an industrial solvent called GBL in some products. We have--we've certainly kept an eye on drug user forums to see how they're talking about how they use the devices to vape other substances and what they do to get those other substances into their e-liquids. How do they manipulate the drug to get it into the e-cigarette and the e-liquid? And then, you know, one of the things that we--right, I mean, this is the great thing about research is that you don't--you don't know what to anticipate next until you're down a path, is we discovered that some of--some of the e-liquids that we had in-house had ethanol in them. And so, you know, we were like, "Why is there ethanol in e-liquids?" And so, you know, we did a--we did a survey of products and found that there were some products that had a substantial amount of ethanol in those e-liquids. And at the time, our lab found many products that were as much as 20% ethanol, and since then, we have found some e-liquids that have as much as 30% ethanol in them. So, you know, in terms of drugs, you know, we have certainly, you know, collaborated on cases with and seen instances in which and also, you know, found e-liquids that have methamphetamine in them and synthetic cannabinoids and opioids, as well, in the e-liquids.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: There's a lot to unpack there, but I want to pull on a couple of those threads. What about the coil itself? You mentioned that it heats up to incredibly hot temperatures.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Uh-hmm.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: What did you find about what that does to the actual coil and the aerosol?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Because of how we got funded, right? National Institute of Justice and thinking about, you know, death investigations and toxicology and, you know, it was--the question that I had was, "Well, if I need--if somebody needs to say the overdose happened because they inhaled this product from an e-cigarette," I wondered, "Well, how do we--how do we pin that?" So, I was thinking about the fact that, you know, the--that e-liquid is in contact with a lot of metal in the device. And so we found that actually e-liquids themselves have trace metals in them, which wasn't all that surprising. But what I really thought about the source of the metal was the coil.

And so, right, so coils are made up of--there's--at the time we did the research, there was two predominant metal compositions. And so we took a look at both of them to find out, one, what is the metal content of this, and what happens when it gets heated just in normal heat cycles? And so, you know, what I thought about was, "Well, can I--if there's enough metal coming off of that coil, is that metal going to be like a residue in somebody's mouth or their upper respiratory tract, you know, if there's enough?" So, I was interested in, are the coils flaking?

So, we ran a bunch of studies where we heated the coils in a standard fashion and then we've ran them through a number of heat cycles up to 150. And at certain points, we stopped and looked at the--looked at the coils under scanning electron microscope and under a regular stereo microscope. And we demonstrated that the coils are flaking significantly even after--even after 50 heat cycles. So, you can literally see the surface of the metal bubbling up and off. So, then the next question was, well, this probably--because it's heavy, right? We thought, "Well, it's probably condensing on the inside of the mouthpiece." And we swabbed the insides and mouthpieces, no metal. And so we're like, "Okay." So, we ran the aerosols through a filter to capture, you know, was there going to be metal on that filter from the aerosol, and sure enough, that's where the metal was.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: So, e-cigarette users are actually breathing in aerosolized metal particles into their lungs?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yes.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: Wow. Not just water vapor?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Not just water vapor.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: So, you talked about all of these millions of droplets and them being a variety of sizes. What does that mean for the absorption, the intake from a forensic toxicology point of view? Is this--is this a good transport mechanism from the point of view of getting into the lung tissue?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: So, what happens when there's a condensation aerosol form, right, and when you inhale all of those millions of droplets--and this is where there's lots of rich data--is that the bigger droplets are going to get trapped in the mouth and hit the back of the throat. So, you think about when you're inhaling--you know, you're inhaling this cloud into your mouth, and then it has to essentially take a 90-degree turn to get into your respiratory system, into your lungs. And so bigger droplets are just big, right? They can't--we kind of intuitively know that it takes big things longer turns to make a turn. And so because your mouth is so small, your throat is so small, big droplets just impact in the mouth and impact in the back of the throat and they never make it into the lung tissue. And so some of the studies that we did, because we were interested in if you change the voltage, if you change the chemical composition of your e-liquid, do the size of the droplets change?

So, what happens is that the small droplets are small enough to make that 90-degree turn into your lung tissue. And the very small droplets will make it into the very deep lung tissue where there is interaction with the blood system, right? And that's where you get oxygen and carbon dioxide exchanged. But that's also where drugs cross into the blood system. So, inhaling substance--inhaling substances is a really efficient way to consume drugs to get into the blood system fast and to have an effect fast. So, we demonstrated that there were some parameters that really didn't change the composition of the droplet sizes and some moderately changed the composition of the droplet sizes. But still, no matter what the parameters were, whether it was the recipe of the e-liquid, or the voltage of the device, you're still going to get sufficient particles, sufficient droplets into the deep lung tissue where there's going to be an exchange into the blood supply. So, at the end of the day, the e-cigarette technology is a very effective tool to getting drugs into the blood supply and into the body for an effect.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: And very quickly as opposed to...

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Very quickly.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: ...taking things orally or other, you know, methods?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah, yeah, very quickly.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: So, you mentioned that the e-cigarette market was not regulated at the time that you began your research. Is it now regulated? Are there limitations to those regulations?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah. So, you know, when the electronic cigarettes began to be imported in '06, '07, you know, the FDA did think that they have regulatory control over them. The FDA had done a lot of work in the '80s and the early '90s to regulate the tobacco industry. And so the regulatory language said that they regulate tobacco and tobacco products. And when the e-cigarettes started being imported into the States, the companies that were importing them essentially told the FDA, "You do not have regulatory oversight over the electronic cigarette because these are not tobacco products. They are nicotine delivery devices." And so the FDA then had to, you know, essentially spend a lot of time developing and redeveloping regulatory language and--you know. And that requires--that requires, you know, Congress and the President's office to give them some direction and authority to do that. So, that all takes time. And then once you have the green light to do that, then you have to develop that language, and building that consensus language, takes time. So, it was almost a decade before the FDA was really able to promulgate the regulations for the electronic cigarette.

And so, you know, is it--is it what I think is robust and thorough? You know, I think there's room for improvement. I think that there--I think there needs to be a real consideration over what kind of chemicals can be put into an e-liquid. So, some of the really early language in the unregulated industry was that, "Well, we're using chemicals that are generally regarded as safe by the FDA." So, they're not harmful. And so that was some of the other mythology that existed, you know, to--for the general public to think that they were safe products. And the term generally regarded as safe means that a chemical is safe to eat. And what consumers didn't appreciate was that these chemicals that are being used in e-liquids are not generally regarded as safe to inhale. Many or most of the chemicals that are used in e-liquids are known toxins, irritants, carcinogens in lung tissue. There is good research that is emerging right now that is demonstrating how chemicals that are used in e-liquids are suppressing the immune system and the lung tissue and propagating lung diseases.

And so when we think about that marketplace being unregulated for a long time, it gave a lot of bandwidth for--essentially for that industry to--you know, I'm just going to say it, get its hooks into the consumers. And then reversing that is hard. So, I think that the regulations really need to put more pins in. You can't put industrial solvents into e-liquids. You--and have a list of chemicals that are forbidden agents in an e-liquid. And, you know--you know, companies have to put in applications to be approved to market their products now and sell to the consumers. And I don't know that that's--that that has all gone far enough. You know, we--we're still not seeing labels on the packages in terms of what the chemicals are in those e-liquids. I think consumers, you know, if you choose to consume nicotine, I think they need to know what's in those e-liquids so that they can make informed decisions about what they're consuming.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: Absolutely. You mentioned lung disease associated with e-cigarette use. In 2019, there was a rash of mostly young, apparently, healthy people hospitalized with e-cigarette or vaping use associated lung injury, which is long so we say EVALI. What causes EVALI and why is it associated with vaping and not with traditional smoking?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: So EVALI. When young people started really reporting with significant lung injury--and in several patients, many patients died from these lung injuries. And when you go back and you evaluate the population of people who were officially diagnosed as having EVALI and--you know. And you do those studies to find out, "Well, what's the--what's the origin, right?" Like, with any kind of disease state that's progressing through a population, What's the origin? We have recent experience with that, right? So what they found was that many of those patients had been vaping gray-market cannabis products. And that in some of those gray-market cannabis products, there was a compound called vitamin E or vitamin E acetate. And, you know, they were able to collect fluid from the lungs of some of those patients and demonstrated that there was vitamin E acetate in the lung tissue of some of those patients. And so, now, we have a chemical that is common to a lot of those patients. But I will say that that wasn't the only compound, right? There were lots of patients that, A, didn't get their lung fluid tested, and, B, actually never said that they vaped a gray-market THC product, or vaped a THC product at all. There were patients that were diagnosed with EVALI and significant EVALI that only vaped nicotine products.

I consulted on a--on a case in which a young man had been having some kind of lung injury on and off for years. And it was always attributed to--he was just prone to the flu. And so what the--when they actually figured out the pattern that he would get the flu right around the time that he was vaping a lot. So he had a lot of lung congestion, fevers, and because he was having lung congestion and not feeling well, he'd stopped vaping. So then he would get better. And then when he was better, then he started vaping again, right? So he was on about a four-month cycle of this. And so--and that young man was never vaping a THC product. He was vaping a nicotine product.

And so I think we can't lose sight of the fact that chemicals, when you inhale them, are going to create injury to tender lung tissue. And that injury is going to cause the body to mount an immune response, right? It's going to send fluid to that response. You're going to get more cells in the--in the lung tissue to try to repair that chemical injury. So generally speaking, that lung tissue is being bombarded by lots of chemicals when you vape. Not the least of which is just PG and VG.

And so, you know, what we understand about PG and VG is that they're what we call hygroscopic, meaning they attract water. So, you know, we--and I'll be--I'll be honest, in the really early days. We were just--we had started the research. We would just get--when we--in our studies, we weigh the e-liquid before and after every time we use it in a device, and so we had just set bottles of e-liquid; left them out on the lab bench. And the student would come in the next day, and they would be heavier. And I'm like, "Whoa, well, we have to make new e-liquid because I don't know why that got--that gained weight overnight." So it gained weight because it was--it was absorbing water out of the atmosphere. So then we had this, you know, then we had to buy an environmental chamber and, you know, with desiccator in it, right?

So, what happens when you inhale--when you inhale PG and VG is that it is drawing water out of your lungs. And youre know, like there's water in your lungs? Yes, there's water in your lung tissue. There's a very thin coat of water in your deep lung tissue that facilitates oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange, very thin layer of water. And so when you inhale PG and VG it's going to absorb that water. So your deep lung tissue is going to dry out. When it dries out that creates injury. So we think that, you know, we can look at PG and VG as chemicals that are going to cause lung injury in addition to all of the other chemicals that are in e-liquids as well.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: And I think that underscores your previous point about generally regarded as safe. The difference between something like vitamin E, that I assume is safe to take as a vitamin, but not to inhale, and probably the same for vegetable glycerin.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah. PG and VG is in, you know, those products are--those compounds are on everyday products that we eat from, you know, toothpaste to cheese.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: We just don't breathe them unless we're vaping.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Right.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: So you talked about the ethanol that you found. That was kind of a shocking discovery and in high concentrations. And so I know that led to your recent NIJ-funded research that includes a clinical study to determine the impact of vaping ethanol, both on actual intoxication and as related to, for example, preliminary breath test, like, might be done in the case of a DUI stop. So I know that research is ongoing. But what have you found so far?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: It's a big collaboration to lift off this clinical study. So we were really interested in--early on when we began wrestling with this, when we recognize that e-liquids contained ethanol, we were really concerned with, of course, the preliminary breath test. And, you know, and I'm rolling around in, well, what are some of the other implications? Because there is very little research on the impact of inhaling ethanol. We began thinking a lot about other implications, not just with DUI investigations, because there are other industries, agencies, organizations that will use the preliminary breath test, like, substance use treatment centers use a PBT, preliminary breath test. You know, some drug courts will use this. There are some drug--workplace drug testing locations will use a PBT as well. So it's not just about DUI investigations. We also started seeing where defense attorneys were posting on their websites that if you vape, they can essentially help you get off of the DUI. And so like I was stunned at the--at the hubris of that, but certainly that seems like a pretty bold claim with no scientific foundation.

So our first clinical study was we had people come in and vape either a 0% or a 20% ethanol e-liquid. And we had the police departments conduct the standardized field sobriety tests. We had the participants self-score, so they had to take little quizzes about how they felt after they vaped ethanol. And, you know, they were questions, like, did it make you feel sick? Did you feel impaired? Do you feel like you can drive? There were probably, I don't know, 30, 35 questions that they had to answer. And then, of course, we're--we are doing--we're conducting the PBT and the--and evidentiary breath test as well, at certain time points. And so what we--one of the things that we wanted to do was essentially test the question: When police, or if police observe this deprivation observation period, meaning that they have--they have eyeballs on the person to make sure that they're not belching to make sure that they don't have anything in their mouth, to make sure that they're not putting anything into their mouth like a mint. And then they administer the preliminary breath test. And so, the question was: is that--is that period of time long enough? So a 15 to 20-minute wait period, if somebody has belched or, you know, if there is alcohol in the mouth 15 to 20 minutes is a long enough time for that ethanol to absorb across the mucous membranes of the mouth. And because we want the PBT to only be measuring ethanol that comes out of the deep lung tissue. So the question was because ethanol is in those e-liquids and e-liquids are so sticky, is that 15 to 20 minutes long enough for ethanol to absorb across all that stickiness? So, we did a lot of PBTs and EBTs immediately after vaping. And so we showed that immediately after vaping 20% ethanol that the PBT picked up ethanol. And we had one participant actually blew a .07. And so, you know, that has lots of implications. You know, in all of those industries that we discussed, particularly if there's an industry or an agency that has a no tolerance policy, or we're talking about a child. And so, you know, we thought that was really important.

The other, I think, really important piece that came out of that, that poked a hole in this hypothesis that defense attorneys had was that the PG and VG do not give a false positive. Every single--every single study that we ran, that was 0% ethanol was negative, had no ethanol reading at all. So we were--we were not surprised by that. But, you know, this is the piece where a negative result is an important thing to publish. So we're really excited to get that into the scientific literature.

I think the other piece that is we have received--I couldn't even tell you, more than--more than 40 emails or communications from people saying, "I have failed my drug test for ethanol, and I don't drink." And so one of the things that we're going to be testing in the second clinical study is that we're going to be pulling blood, urine, and oral fluid in the second clinical and we're going to be--so patients are going to be drinking ethanol. So we're going to try to get them to a .08, and then we're going to have them vape. And so--and we're going to have, you know, they're going to vape, 0% or 20% ethanol, and then we're going to have of course placebos in that as well. And so the question is, for those who are just--those who are just vaping ethanol, we're going to be looking at a number of biomarkers that have forensic and clinical implications, is that does vaping ethanol give a rise in those biomarkers that are evaluated by a number of industries, is somebody going to test positive? So what--we're, you know, we have our officers trained right now. And we're literally calling our database to see if anybody's ready to come in. So we're literally launching that study now.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: That's fantastic.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah. We're excited about it.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: Well, I appreciate you taking time to talk to us today, Dr. Peace. What would you most want our listeners to understand about vaping from all of your copious research findings?

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: I think the most important thing for a consumer to do when they--when they choose--when they choose to consume anything is that they are able to make an informed decision about what it is that they're consuming and understand what all of the consequences could potentially be. And if we don't have a transparent industry that is allowing the consumer to make those decisions then, you know, there--they could have adverse--they could have adverse events that, you know, that they're not--they don't understand. And if they don't understand it, are they reporting those to their physician? I think the other piece is that, you know, physicians also need, you know, to understand that there are serious--could be serious consequences for their patients who are also vaping. And that needs to be, you know, part of a conversation with the physician. And so, I think at the end of the day, it really is about consumers making informed decisions and knowing what they're consuming and what those consequences could be.

DR. FRANCES SCOTT: That's a great takeaway. The science of vaping and e-cigarette use is complicated. So if you choose to partake be an informed consumer and understand that vaping is probably not what you think. Thank you, Dr. Peace. And thank you to all our listeners for joining us.

DR. MICHELLE PEACE: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the time.

SPEAKER 2: To learn more about today's topic or about NIJ visit the links in the episode description and join us for new episodes every month.

Originally posted here:

Vaping: It's Not What You Think | National Institute of Justice - National Institute of Justice