An advocate who is urging authorities to tighten regulations to restrict access to vaping products by young people says we won’t know the full effects of vaping for many years to come.
Dr. Leslie Phillips, a pharmacist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, also runs a smoking cessation program with Eastern Health. She notes that a federal study on substance use shows Canada to have one of the highest rates of youth vaping in the world, and Newfoundland and Labrador the highest rate of youth vaping of any province in Canada.
Dr. Phillips says tobacco companies have done a great job marketing the product with all the different types of flavours.
She says the product is not working because the number of people smoking in Canada has not changed in twenty years.
Dr. Leslie Phillips (VOCM News file photo)
She says a quarter of the youth who vape daily do so within the first five minutes of waking and one-half within the first hour. Phillips says that’s a strong indicator of nicotine addiction—higher than what they see for smoking.
Dr. Phillips says programs to get people off the vape are similar to those designed to get people off cigarettes.
“It’s all nicotine and all these quit medications either act like nicotine or are nicotine to help with the withdrawal,” says Dr. Phillips.
