Children’s’ vaping and premature death

I work in a Pupil Referral Unit in London and have seen firsthand the mental and physical effects of disposable vapes. I have seen a rapid increase in addiction, leading to violence and early onset of breathing problems.

Vaping is highly addictive - as everyone knows - and companies are deliberately targeting kids. Two teenagers I’m aware of are now in hospital with clots on their lungs through vaping.

Vaping is causing domestic violence in families, with teenagers arguing and stealing at home to pay for their addiction, leading to parents buying vapes for their children to shut them up.

Vaping is increasing the robberies and stabbings on the street, with children robbing other children for their vapes.

I’m out there and seeing it and getting the reports. This is a major epidemic and - unless action is taken NOW - it will be too late.

Under current legislation it’s illegal to SELL vapes to underage children. This doesn’t deter unscrupulous shopkeepers from selling them.

That means that children as young as 10 are walking around with an illegal, highly addictive drug sticking out of their mouths and nobody stops it or does anything about it. Years ago, if you’d seen a 10 year-old walking around with a cigarette in his mouth, you’d have been shocked. Now it’s a commonplace thing to see a child puffing on a vape.

Under new legislation, students cannot be excluded from school anymore for vaping, which - basically - is encouraging our young people to become addicts as young as 10.

Vapes come in all flavours now to entice our young people to buy them. God knows what that means for future generations.

This is serious. This is appalling. This is heading towards a society that doesn’t seem concerned about the mental and physical well-being of our children.

Vapes contain cancer-causing chemicals, such as acetaldehyde and formaldehyde. Vaping has been linked with Emphysema and decreases the production of antiviral protein SPLUNC1, increasing the risks of respiratory infections. Vapes can also stop DNA repair mechanisms.

In a study by the American Heart Association, anxiety was 20 per cent more prevalent in vapers and 50 per cent of vapers showed symptoms of depression.

Around 90 per cent of vapes are made in China, with many of the factories lacking quality control. This results in vapes containing harmful products, in some instances containing ‘Spice’ which is a drug that causes hallucinations (one of the students at our PRU collapsed in the high street, due to this).

The dangers of vaping regarding our young people are too numerous to list here, but the long-term effects are very real. Perhaps the most alarming is the vaping lead to EVALI, which is a severe lung disease caused by vaping, with 2,051 cases recorded in the U.S. and 39 deaths.

Please work to eradicate this problem by implementing a complete ban on disposal vapes, stopping the imports of disposable vapes to the UK and working to target shopkeepers that sell vapes to children with severe penalties IMMEDIATELY, before we have a future generation that will suffer premature health problems and death.