Youth vaping takes over as cigarette smoking declines

SHERIDAN — While the number of youth cigarette smokers continues to decline across the country, a new but all too common foe looms over Wyoming’s teenagers: vaping.
Electronic nicotine delivery systems including e-cigarettes, e-hookahs, e-pipes and e-cigars are defined by the Center for Disease Control as “devices that deliver aerosolized nicotine, flavorings, and/or other chemicals into the lungs of users.”
In a Prevention Needs Assessment survey conducted by the University of Wyoming’s Survey and Analysis Center, it was found the percentage of Wyoming high school students who smoke cigarettes declined by 52% between 2004 and 2018. 
The same survey reported 36% of Wyoming high school students currently vaped in 2018, more than triple the 11% of cigarette smokers younger than 18 that year.
According to WySAC, the rate is “higher than current use of any other substances of abuse on the PNA, including alcohol and other drugs, presenting a new challenge for tobacco prevention in Wyoming.”
“We definitely see a rise [in use], not significantly over the past year, but since vaping has become a thing,” said Sheridan County Community Prevention Manager Ann Perkins. “One of the concerns is that it’s very difficult to tell what kids are vaping these days. Is it tobacco, THC, something else?
“With tobacco there’s enormous risk because of the hard metals that are in the vaping devices,” Perkins continued. “A lot of this is still so new and there’s still so little regulation on it that we don’t really know what they’re putting in their bodies when they’re vaping.”
Part of the struggle of limiting underage use of tobacco and nicotine products lies in local culture, Perkins said.
“People really don’t see that it’s a big deal, and we need to make sure that parents and leaders know that it is a big deal,” she said.
Sheridan High School Resource Officer Ben Hawkins faces the issue on campus every day and said the rising social acceptance of vaping contributes greatly to the problem.
“I think it’s becoming more of a social thing… if I had to guess, there’s probably between 30 and 40% of the school that would have a vape in their pocket right now,” Officer Hawkins said. “Kids are just going into the bathroom and asking — they call it ‘nic,’ short for nicotine — so they just ask each other if they’ve got ‘nic’ and that’s about it.”
Sheridan High School installed vape sensors in the bathrooms to help mitigate use on campus, devices similar to smoke detectors that identify certain chemicals found in vaping. When the sensors are triggered, Hawkins and other members of administration are notified.
“The vape sensors go off daily, several times a day. It’s just a matter of catching them. I got three [Monday],” Hawkins said. “We always have the same groups of kids in the bathroom every time, and the school is not going to — and I’m not going to — go into a full pat-down search for a vape… these kids hide them in their bras, they hide them in their underwear, places we can’t get to and they know that.”
In 2020, the legal age to purchase tobacco products was raised from 18 to 21, but along with that change, legal consequences for minors getting caught with tobacco products were lowered. 
Hawkins said a minor in possession of tobacco would originally constitute a $150 fine and a mandatory court appearance. Now the fine has dropped to $25 and appearance in court is no longer required.
“I think the state kind of did us a disservice when it comes to that… I don’t think it’s very effective anymore. These kids are paying more for the vape than they are for the actual citation,” Hawkins said. “It doesn’t make them stop, they’re just going to go get another one.”
In the wake of lowered legal consequences, Hawkins said the key may be changing the social aspect of the phenomenon.
“I tell these kids that it’s their lungs. If they want to deep fry their lungs, that’s up to them, just don’t give it to other people. It’s like getting stuck in a mud hole and pulling somebody in with you,” Hawkins said. “Kids are going to do what kids do, but we’d rather they not bring it to school… not doing it in school, I think that would help in some way.”
Perkins said guiding teenagers away from nicotine will require starting hard conversations.
“We need to be really up front and frank with our kids that [nicotine] is an addictive substance,” Perkins said. “We really need to talk about consequences . . . It’s a stress reliever, it’s a coping mechanism especially coming out of COVID, [but] we need to let the kids and parents know that there’s better ways to handle stress.”
Preventing children and teenagers from using nicotine takes a village, Perkins said.
“It’s something that I can’t do alone, it’s something our schools can’t do alone, it has to be a community effort,” she said.
 
This story was published on Nov. 18, 2022.