Bubblegum flavoured, feted on TikTok and in some cases addictive – vaping is attracting a generation of young people who would never light a cigarette. And it’s making some sick
Ben wants to quit vaping. He has a few times already. It’s easy, he says, despite the tremors and headaches, feeling hot then cold, the irritability.
But then he says vapes – also known as e-cigarettes – containing nicotine are so easy to get despite being illegal to sell in Australia without a prescription, he’s confident he can quit any time. So he starts it up again.
Ben* is 17, and has been using vapes containing nicotine for two years. “At the beginning, it’s just like trying to look cool and stuff, but then it does sort of become pretty intense,” he says. It started as a “fun little thing”, buying a vape that contained 300 one-second “puffs”. One would last him a week. Three months later, he would go through one of those in a single day.
Now he’s buying vapes containing 1,800 puffs from vape shops and tobacconists, and he can use one of those up in around four days.
He knows it’s damaging his health. “I recently came down with the flu and ever since then my lungs, they’ve been not in the best shape.” He’s heard of others who had strokes linked to vaping. He knows about “popcorn lung” – a scarring of the lungs associated with the chemical diacetyl, which used to be found in commercial popcorn brands and has been found in some vape flavours. He’s seen the public health ads talking about the hazardous chemicals in vape liquid.
But still Ben can’t stop vaping. He wants to quit “100%”. He says there’s no health benefit from taking nicotine. “I think we would have had a completely nicotine-free generation if vapes weren’t invented.”
From the lungs to blood to brain
Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical. Teenagers like Ben – their young brains, bodies and lungs still developing – can become dependent incredibly quickly once the chemical has sunk its claws in them.
Young people have the potential to turn into lucrative long-term vaping customers, argues Prof Renee Bittoun – a tobacco treatment specialist at Avondale University and the University of Notre Dame. “Recruiting a 12-year-old into this is a really good business model because they’ll become dependent on it, need to buy it every day, and that becomes their consumer,” she says.
“The vapes today that they’re manufacturing are so sophisticated that they deliver nicotine into the lungs, very deep into the lungs,” Bittoun says. From there, the nicotine moves quickly into the bloodstream, and is delivered straight to the brain in a massive rush – much faster than from a cigarette – where it interacts with nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.
When these receptors are stimulated, more of them get produced. And the more of them that get produced, the more nicotine is needed to bind to them. This creates the cravings that can kick in barely hours after a puff, as nicotine is quickly broken down in the body. “That makes it very dependence-producing, that speed of delivery,” Bittoun says.
It also makes it easy to absorb large amounts of nicotine in a single puff, which can lead to what users call “nic-sick”: nausea and vomiting from nicotine toxicity. It can even cause seizures. Just this month one such seizure is believed to have afflicted a Sydney high school student in the school toilets.
Thirteen years old and vomiting from withdrawals
Uncontrolled vomiting was what finally confirmed to Natasha that her 13-year-old son Olly* was vaping. “Olly’s never vomited, even as a baby,” she says. But when he experienced a prolonged bout of vomiting while out with friends, she realised that the vaping she had suspected was out of control.
Olly was trying to hide it, but Natasha would occasionally find a vape under his pillow at home. “They haven’t been around that cigarette industry like we did as kids,” she says. “[They have] no idea of the dangers.” She worries that the addiction is creating even more anxiety and mental health issues in young people still dealing with the effects of the pandemic and lockdowns.
Olly started vaping because his friends and other kids were doing it. It made him feel “relaxed and happy”, he says – “at first”. But then he had two episodes of being nic-sick, and was getting headaches. He was also getting withdrawal symptoms in between vaping sessions, feeling “anxious like you really want one, stressed about how to get one”, Olly says.
Bianca Nogrady – The Guardian – 2022-06-24.
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