Vaping is an epidemic among teens worldwide. It affects them physically and mentally. More and more teens are vaping due to things like peer pressure or stress. They get addicted and aren’t able to stop. While vaping is illegal for minors, many teens find ways to continue to use the device. Sugary flavors draw teens into vaping and distract them from the actual dangers.  We hope to inform students everywhere about that and all the other risks of vaping. 

Many kids believe that vaping is just a bad habit and that it isn’t too harmful. This is not the case as e-cigarettes have a detrimental effect on almost every part of our body. There is the obvious: vaping can seriously harm our lungs and cause problems now and in the future. But most kids don’t know that vaping has a significant impact on our behavior. Vaping can slow brain development and affect many things like memory, concentration, learning, self-control, attention, and mood.  Many people are aware of how bad smoking cigarettes is for your health and believe that a vape is nowhere near that. This is not true. Vapes usually have the same amount of nicotine in them as cigarettes do. This is not proven to be true though, because e-cigarette companies are not required to tell their customers how much nicotine their vapes contain. This is a big problem as it tricks many kids into becoming addicted to something so dangerous like nicotine. There is a scary amount of kids who are getting addicted to vapes. According to the CDC, in 2020, 19.6% of high school students (3.02 million) and 4.7% of middle school students (550,000) reported current e-cigarette use. Among current e-cigarette users, 38.9% of high school students and 20.0% of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes on 20 or more of the past 30 days; 22.5% of high school users and 9.4% of middle school users reported daily use. Among all current e-cigarette users, 82.9% used flavored e-cigarettes, including 84.7% of high school users (2.53 million) and 73.9% of middle school users (400,000).

These numbers need to be reduced. Students should not be voluntarily putting themselves in harm like this. 

Our goal is to inform students about the dangers of vaping.  If we let them know, they may feel more inclined to start quitting or even better, never start.  To do this, we created a digital campaign. Our campaign will help spread awareness about student vaping in our schools, through the engagement and distribution of our website’s content.  For all students, we provided information on the risks of vaping. For those that are trying to quit, we provided process and programs to help.  The website will address not only e-cigarette users but also their friends and families.  Hopefully, our website will make them more aware of the friend or family member who has been targeted by e-cigarette companies. They will support them and be there for them. Quitting vaping is extremely hard, but a little support will go a long way. If students have their loved ones with them every step of the way, they will be more inclined to stay strong and motivated.  Our final goal is to have Coppell schools install vape detectors. These detectors will detect chemical changes in the atmosphere and alert the school security system.  By starting a petition, we hope to convince Coppell ISD to install these devices. This way, students will have even more motivation to start their quitting process.