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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > If You Have Teens in Your House, This Pedcast is For You (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		If You Have Teens in Your House, This Pedcast is For You (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:11:24
	Publish Date:		2020-09-20 00:36:03
	Description:		Just when we thought we were going to get American kids to stop adopting the horrible, nasty, destructive, habit of smoking tobacco cigarettes, here comes the electronic-cigarette industry with more heartache. Find out the recent trends with e- cigarettes use in the U.S., how their manufacturers, in my opinion, are able to lure so many kids into using their products, and most importantly, some simple things you can do to keep your teens from being vaping in this edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics. Image by Pixabay Musical Intro The Slow Death of Cigarettes in the U.S. If you are a long time Doc Smo follower, you have heard me talk about the incredible success we have had in the U.S. at convincing teens not to start using cigarettes. I must admit, I have been a little obsessed about cigarettes because when I was a child, it seemed like every adult around me smoked – and I hated it. Some of my earliest memories were running into hot dangling cigarettes as I ran through the house playing or struggling to breath in a closed-up car while the adults smoked. During my childhood, approximately 50% of Americans smoked regularly. Tobacco companies were some of the biggest companies on the planet in those days, until the tobacco settlement of 1998, when cigarette use slowly declined to 20%. Out with Joe Camel, out with gorgeous young models brandishing cigarettes in magazines, and out with all the other marketing tricks that target young people to take up the habit. And these changes worked! We were actually well on our way to ridding ourselves of this horrible addiction which robs an average of 10 years of life from its long-term users and causes so much disease. Tobacco 2.0 and Today’s Children – The Rise of Vaping Then came the meteoric rise of vaping. Almost overnight, the JUUL Corporation along with other companies created a new nicotine habit that pulled a large percentage of American children to a new vice – nicotine addiction via the electronic cigarette. High tech, sleek, and easy to use with flavors like cotton candy and bubble gum, made it an almost instant sensation among teens. The 1940’s brought our parents ash trays and smoke-filled parties but the 21st century delivered your children hot vapor, laced with the same highly addictive chemical-nicotine- a lot of nicotine mind you. To get an equivalent hit of nicotine from cigarettes, one would have to smoke twenty cigarettes. You heard me right, on vape pod delivers the same amount of nicotine that is contained in an entire pack of cigarettes. Of course the e-cig manufacturers deny targeting children but they have used two great strategies to attract children to their products; flavored pods that appeal to children and images of really beautiful, sexy, confident people using their products. Tobacco 2.0. Same playbook, slightly different product. Think that your children are immune to these messages? Think again. A staggering number of children are regular users. Health Risks that Come with Vaping The manufacturers of vaping products claim that they are much safer than smoking an old-fashioned cigarette – which may be true. However, e-cigs still come with problems, not the least of which is nicotine addiction. Talk to any ex-smoker and they will tell you how difficult it was to quit smoking. The nicotine withdrawal symptoms are very difficult to resist. As for the long-term effects of vaping, common sense tells us that becoming literally addicted to a highly addictive chemical (nicotine) and inhaling a mixture of hot vaporized water, propylene glycol, and glycerin can’t be good for a child’s lungs or body. In fact, a study from the University of North Carolina showed that propylene glycol and glycerin are toxic at a cellular level. What makes this especially scary is that those two chemicals are the two primary ingredients in e-cigarettes. Additionally, various studies have shown that nicotine can impact brain development which...
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