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Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

nytimes.com

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Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#121

Post by sloppycee »

bungie4 wrote: post #53
nradov wrote: post #20

A lot of those kids are probably self medicating with nicotine for stress / anxiety / ADHD. I've never been a user myself but it seems like for many people who get nervous and have trouble focusing, a little nicotine helps steady them out. Edit: To be clear, I'm not recommending that anyone, especially children, self medicate with psychoactive substances.

Nicotine is a stimulant, not a depressant. Do you take Meth to 'even out'? Me, I just quit smoking entirely 3 years ago.

I take amphetamines to 'even out'...

Stimulants affect people with certain disorders differently, as the parent mentioned (ADHD, etc.).

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#122

Post by foreigner »

Why not just set the minimum birthdate to buy nicotine products at 2000, so only 18 year olds can buy it this year, and future generations cannot? Seems like that would sidestep the whole "removing people's rights" argument and gradually just phase it out completely? Has any jurisdiction done that?

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#123

Post by Humdeee »

TFortunato wrote: post #80
LyndsySimon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have all sorts of metals, liquids, flavoring compounds, wicks, etc Metal content is negligible unless you dry hit. No one likes that so it's pretty much a self-limiting problem. Flavoring compounds, though... there are liquids out there that contain diacetyl (a "buttery" flavoring). It's relatively common in foods, but is known specifically to cause issues when heated and inhaled. ETA: I just saw that this is m…

Sorry to be "that guy", but could you explain what you mean by metal content being negligible unless you dry hit? I assumed when people were talking about metal content, they were referring to metal vapors from the heating elements or something, but I'll admit that I don't know enough about this, or what a dry hit is vs. normal use, or how we know when metal vapors or whatever are/aren't a concern. (I feel so old rig…

You're not "that guy" at all. It's quite the opposite. Most people (myself included) have no clue what a dry hit is as well. In fact, people who vape often have the reputation of being "that guy".

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#124

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

TheBeardKing wrote: post #120
extrememacaroni wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explosion refers to the increase rate in those percentages, not to the percentages themselves. Example: expecting in a relatively short amount of time, say, 0.1% and getting 4% qualifies as explosion to me.

Obviously the rate increased, it's a fairly new device. Nintendo Switch must've went nuclear. Pokemon Go caused utter annihiliation.

The rate of tobacco consumption overall is what's important. So we would do a comparison like high school upperclassmen who smoke cigarettes in 2010 (or maybe even a bit earlier) to high school upperclassmen who smoke cigarettes and/or vape in 2018. The difference would tell us what we want to know.

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#125

Post by dajohnson89 »

TheBeardKing wrote: post #120
extrememacaroni wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explosion refers to the increase rate in those percentages, not to the percentages themselves. Example: expecting in a relatively short amount of time, say, 0.1% and getting 4% qualifies as explosion to me.

Obviously the rate increased, it's a fairly new device. Nintendo Switch must've went nuclear. Pokemon Go caused utter annihiliation.

switch and Pokemon can't be smoked inside a school

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#126

Post by 013a »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #11
neaden wrote: post #2

I think it is very important for everyone to keep in mind that vaping is probably safer than smoking. But it might not be, we don't know for sure. And it is certainly worse than not consuming any tobacco product. So trying to encourage active smokers to switch to vaping is probably beneficial, but increasing overall tobacco consumption rates is bad.

There's the risk that ecigs are an on ramp to actual cigarette smoking. That reflects my experience, first using a friends vape now and then to bumming the occasional cigarette to actual smoking. There's a symmetry we don't like to acknowledge between what makes vapes good for quitting - you can slowly ramp your nicotine - and what makes vapes good for starting. See this study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamape…

If there's one thing I think is absolutely true in the world of addiction, its that people will find an addiction. Everyone has a way to trigger a dopamine release; most of the time its multiple ways. Eating fatty/carby food; soda; caffeine; alcohol; smoking; vaping; marijuana; porn; masturbating; sex; exercising; prescription medication abuse; cocaine; video games; physically abusing other people; all of these tie back to releasing pleasurable chemicals in the brain of someone, and that's why they do it. Addiction is a foundational constant in the human experience.

Point being, you can't get rid of addiction without getting rid of pleasure. Which means, you can't get rid of addiction. So if you tell kids "don't smoke, don't vape, don't do anything, its all bad because its addicting", you're basically self-selecting what addictions our culture has labeled as "fine" without understanding all of the side-effects of the addiction. Heart disease kills more people than cigarettes and alcohol ever did; are we ready to say you have to be 21 before you can buy McDonalds?

What I'm trying to arrive at is this: I'm all for the development of safer, more accessible dopamine delivery systems. One way to look at them is that they're a gateway to harder stuff, but I tend to disagree. They will be that for some people, but those people were lost to begin with. They would have found cigarettes whether they had help from vaping or not.

I think if you accept that addiction is a constant and everyone needs an addiction, then they can actually be a net positive because they can help people avoid the harder stuff. If the only way you have to trigger your dopamine is cigarettes, then if you're not doing cigarettes you're doing alcohol, cocaine, fatty foods, porn, etc. And, really, we need more research on vaping, but from the scientific research and statistics we have: vaping might be "healthier" than all of those.

Its not healthier than doing nothing, but doing nothing isn't an option.

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#127

Post by wyldfire »

TheBeardKing wrote: post #120
extrememacaroni wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explosion refers to the increase rate in those percentages, not to the percentages themselves. Example: expecting in a relatively short amount of time, say, 0.1% and getting 4% qualifies as explosion to me.

Obviously the rate increased, it's a fairly new device. Nintendo Switch must've went nuclear. Pokemon Go caused utter annihiliation.

It's a public health concern, so it's prudent to sample how much it's consumed.

> Obviously the rate increased, it's a fairly new device.

It's not necessarily so that "new device" therefore "rate increase." It could be flat or declining since earlier surveys. The fact that it isn't flat means that it's popular and likely warrants further study and/or intervention. The descriptor "explosive" applies here because many other similar public-health-impacting behaviors which are studied by similar researchers change much more slowly over time.

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#128

Post by YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #114
bspn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that for traditional tobacco smokers it is likely a net-positive, and it is potentially a tool they can use to reduce their nicotine intake and even eliminate it altogether. The concern with the latest explosion in schools, however, is the significant number of kids getting addicted to nicotine who may not otherwise have tried smoking traditional cigarettes. The nicotine level in a Juul pod is incredibly high…

> The concern [is] kids getting addicted to nicotine Non-snarky question: why is that a concern? Nicotine -- in the absence of burning tobacco -- isn't bad for you.

I don't think it's quite that clear – however, I think it is considered clear that nicotine is nowhere near as harmful as tobacco smoke.

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#129

Post by refurb »

Symbiote wrote: post #119
lemonberry wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father's been smoking for over 50 years. I got him to switch to mostly vaping last year. The difference in his health has been profound. It almost eliminated his coughing, increased his ability to walk distances. His doctor was amazed at his last checkup. She said she couldn't recommend it to patients due to the uncertainties, but encouraged him to keep doing whatever it is that he's doing. Edit: I bought him the…

The UK's NHS says "particularly if you've already tried other methods of quitting smoking without success, you might want to give e-cigarettes a go" and "according to current evidence on e-cigarettes, they carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes." https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/smoking/Pages/e-cigarettes.aspx

Wow. Hats off to the NHS.

Is vaping harmless? Unlikely. Based on current understanding is it likely much less harmful than smoking tobacco? Yes.

Re: Schools Struggle with Vaping Explosion

#130

Post by Anon1096 »

TheBeardKing wrote: post #109

>The 2017 Monitoring the Future survey on adolescent drug use found that 11 percent of 12th graders, 8.5 percent of 10th graders and 3.5 percent of 8th graders had vaped nicotine in the previous 30 days. Of those high school seniors, 24 percent reported vaping daily, which the study defined as vaping on 20 or more occasions in the previous 30 days I'm sorry, but is [1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact…

Just above that in the article it states that 45 percent of the students at the Boulder school admitted to vaping. So yes, I would consider that an explosion.
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