Richard Hogan: How do we stop our children vaping?

It is terribly troubling watching children suck thousands of unknown chemicals into their young lungs. 

We need better education in schools about vaping. Picture: Alamy/PA

Of all the crazes that have impacted the world of the adolescent, vaping has to be one of the most insidious. Guised as a smoking remedy, an alternative that can wean you off your nasty nicotine habit. 

But in reality, these companies have simply been waiting in the long grass desperately strategizing how they can get their claws back into a failing market. And by God have they achieved it. It is terribly troubling watching so many children suck thousands of unknown chemicals into their young lungs. 

Of course, most of my generation smoked. In the early 90s, information was only really starting to come into society about the harm smoking does to the human body. I was one such teenager. I smoked for a couple of years. When the warnings arrived on the packaging, it didn’t really change my habit, but it certainly made me more aware that what I was doing was detrimental to my future health. But when you’re young, you don’t really think too far into the future. That’s someone else’s problem. 

That’s the folly of youth, you live in the moment with very little risk-averse thinking. That is why these companies have been so successful. They have presented it as a safe alternative to smoking. Any time I write about vaping, these companies send me emails telling me their product is safe and in keeping with health regulations. They are at pains to express how safe their product is. It all smacks of 1950s cigarette ads. I only have one question for them, "show me the study that vaping is safe" – the computer goes silent.

When I’m talking with teenagers on this topic, I try not to lecture them. They have a heightened sense of hypocrisy to self-righteous lecturing. So, I avoid that approach. I ask them what they like about it. They generally say that they find it soothing and the flavours delicious. The fact that there are all sorts of bubble gum and sweet flavours, tells you all you need to know about the scruples of the people that create these products. They are targeting our impressionable children. 

Thankfully the Government has finally acted and enforced new legislation that imposes fines on shops that sell vapes to anyone under 18 years of age. The banning of advertising near schools will have little impact on a teenager's vaping habit. It’s the flavours themselves that the Government need to go after. 

Richard Hogan. Picture: Moya Nolan

Australia actually brought in an outright ban on recreational vaping for all ages. Of course that feeds an underground market, but the fact that so many children are vaping, highlights that legislation on age hasn’t really impacted what is happening on the ground. 

In my experience, parents can also feel at least their children aren’t smoking tobacco. That is exactly how these companies want parents to feel because it creates a complacency in parents that allows their child to consume dangerous chemicals, and feed the pockets of these companies.

We need better education in schools about vaping. They need to know what they are consuming. They also need to know how they are being targeted by these companies through the flavours they offer. This won’t necessarily stop current teenagers from vaping, but it might prevent younger children from taking it up. 

Teenagers hate to feel they are a part of some trend, the minute something becomes very popular they tend to reject it for fear of seeming like everyone else. No 13-year-old confesses to playing Fortnite currently because it’s seen as passé and childish. That’s the message I try to get across to teenagers. 

I try to illuminate how they have been targeted and how they have fallen for it. I show them cigarette ads from the 50s and 60s and give them the stats on smoke-related deaths in those decades. This generally stokes a good conversation around the topic, and often I meet teenagers who tell me they stopped because they didn’t want to feed the profits of these companies and damage their health in the process. 

Vaping is just another craze that has engulfed our teenagers. Parents must move from their dissonance, these products are not anyway helpful or prevent our children from smoking, they are the modern smoking. We must parent them. Prevention is always far better than cure. I talk to my daughter about them a lot. Of course, she has seen people vape, but I hope that the information I have given her will help her to make the right decision for her health when I’m not there. That is all any of us can do.

Opening up a conversation with your child about this new phenomenon, is an important first step in prevention. Peer pressure has always been the scourge of teenagers and it will always be a scourge. But teaching your child about the importance of their health and not feeling like they have to fit in by doing something they don’t really want to do, is a vitally important message to give your child as they move into adolescence. 

If vaping goes, which I hope it does, something else will replace it. Open and honest dialogue with our children, and good firm boundaries that teach them the consequences of their behaviours will always be the best antidote to any new fade that arrives on the street.