Youth Vape Forum

On Wednesday 7 June 2023 we were invited to a Youth Vape Forum to represent our school and the youth in our community. We spent the day consulting with key agencies to understand the current situation, the local need, knowledge, and perceptions of youth vaping in our community.

As part of a coordinated and community-informed approach, the goal was to initiate action to protect young people from the harm of e-cigarettes. We started the process of co-designing initiatives to empower young people to make positive decisions about their health, particularly around such a complex issue as vaping.

These suggested initiatives will form the basis of a Regional Action Plan to coordinate collaborative actions to reduce uptake and the harms of youth vaping. 

We focused on important questions such as;

• What are the concerns you see with vaping?
• What solutions are needed to reduce the impact of youth vaping?
• Think about the steps needed to make it happen? What strategies and resources are needed to be involved and when should it happen?
• Next steps and future involvement

We found it very interesting that during this experience there was a disconnect between adults' perceptions of vaping in our community and the perception of youth. We also assumed that the rates of youth (14-21 years) vaping would be higher than the researched 16.5% daily users.

What was also interesting was looking at a teenager's behavioral relationship with vapes and the complications with trying to target action. We learned that this relationship is not just based on whether teens vape or not but on how this relationship exists on a continuum. 

Furthermore, we were intrigued by the prevalence of nicotine addiction among young vapers and the associated concerns, especially that it can lead to long-term dependence and a potential gateway to other risk behaviors.

We were very privileged to be a part of and witness the process of the government and healthcare response to the needs of adolescents and working collaboratively with health professionals to initiate action to reduce uptake and the harms of youth vaping.