The Effects of Vaping

By Shreya

​In my school, vaping is a huge problem. When I was nearing the end of my elementary school years, some middle school friends would tell me stories about kids huddled up in the big stall of the bathroom, taking turns vaping. When I heard those stories, I thought of them as uncommon scenarios that my friends happened to see. But now that I am a seventh grader, I see the horrifying truth of how common and easy it is for middle school students to get vapes. It's even worse when someone you know tells you they are vaping. Getting caught vaping is a suspendable offense at best; at worst, you could be expelled. What are you supposed to do about it? Tell the teacher that one of your friends is vaping and maybe get them expelled and ruin their life? Or perhaps you could gently try to fix the problem yourself, but what if something goes wrong and you lose a friend because they don’t get why you are trying to tell them what to do, and they still continue vaping? But if you don’t do anything about it and something goes wrong in your friend's life, wouldn't that guilty feeling eat you up inside?
When I saw the advertisement for Teens For Tomorrow (TFT), a drug and substance use prevention program in Clark County, on my school's bulletin board, I knew I had to join. Being part of TFT has shown me vaping isn’t just a problem in my school; it's a problem for the whole county, as shown in this article https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/nov/02/. Yes, this article shows that the use of vapes and e-cigarettes has dropped among high schoolers. Still, it also states that the use for middle schoolers has stayed the same, which means in the future, if these middle school students don’t stop vaping, they are going to show the incoming sixth graders that it's ok to vape, and soon vaping will rise again unless we stop the issue.
I aim to reduce this issue significantly in my community by starting clubs in schools tackling this issue and giving brief lessons to classes explaining the effects. Other organizations like TFT could lead these clubs until they are self-sufficient. I also think it would be beneficial to start educating kids as young as fourth grade about the effects of vaping so that when they come to middle school, they don’t fall into peer pressure and vape without knowing the side effects. Awareness is a big part of vape prevention. If kids aren’t aware of the consequences, there’s no way to stop them from vaping. The middle or high schoolers in this school could take field trips to elementary schools in their district and talk about the consequences of vaping. I will try to do my best through TFT to further this cause.

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