Raising awareness of E-cigarettes and Vapes with young people

Over the last few months, we have had an increase in the number of requests for session focusing on e-cigarettes and vapes, predominantly for 11/12 year olds in Primary 7. However, in one case we had a request to work with young people as young as 9/10 year old in Primary 5.

The ASH London’s recent research also emphasised an increase in young people’s awareness of e-cigarettes from 64% in 2013 to 90% in 2022, this backed up with feedback from schools that e-cigarettes have been an issue “with some pupils bringing vapes into school.”

According to ASH London’s research, 13.9% of 11-17 year olds had tried vapes in 2020 (prior to the first lock down). This was when we had our first request from a Primary School to cover e-cigarettes and vapes. School staff told us that, “I think having external people come in to the class to run these sessions can have more of an impact that just teaching staff covering it. The children see these visitors as the experts and often listen and learn more.”

We responded to this request by designed and delivering an interactive session, taking a harm reduce approach. Comments from a teacher included “Pupils have the information they need to make the right choices around smoking and vaping. Lots of myths were busted and the pupils now have the facts.”

In addition to this, we aimed at enhancing the current curriculum and transition to high school. A teacher commented, “…the presentation was informative and engaging and pitched at the right level for the age of the pupils.”

Following on from this, as more information and statistic have become available, we have continued to develop our sessions ensuring it is up-to-date whilst responding to the needs and interests of young people.   Another teacher  fed back that, “The session made them more aware of the seriousness of this by teaching them about the legal side of it as well as the health side.”

It is important to remember the current 11/12 year old young people who have just completed their transition from Primary School to Secondary School were  in Primary 5 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Therefore, over the last few years they have been faced with various different challenges to young people prior to the pandemic.

ASH London  highlights that in 2022, 42.1% of children & young people believe that e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobacco.

The following story from a colleague highlights how attracting vaping is to very young children, and how confusing they find being told that the sweet smelling vape isn’t aimed at them.

A few weeks had passed from a conversation with my 5-year-old daughter Emily, about tobacco cigarettes when walking to the local library and the scent of a candy floss-flavoured vape wafted in their direction.

Emily noticed and said ‘Mm I smell something yummy for kids!’ I looked up and saw that it was someone walking in front of them smoking a disposable vape.

I said ‘Oh I smell that too, that’s not actually something for kids it’s someone smoking in front of us.’ Emily said ‘No that’s a kid’s smell, it smells like chocolate and sweets!’ (Emily thinks any sweet treats smell like ‘chocolate’.) I replied ‘It might smell like that, but it’s a grownup thing because it’s like the cigarettes we talked about before, they’ve just changed it a bit to make it smell nicer – it’s still not safe for kids.’

Emily frowned at me, confused and a bit suspicious that I was withholding a treat. ‘Why do things smell like that if it’s not for kids? It smells like it’s for kids.’

If you are interested to hearing more about our project or have a group you feel would benefit from our Going Forward session on vaping, please get in touch laura@fastforward.org.uk  0131 554 4300.