to vape or not to vape?

I caught my older son with a vape the other day. He's 15 and way too young to even be thinking about smoking. After watching how sick my mom was for the last several years (for more reasons than all of the packs of cigarettes she smoked since she was young), the last thing I want to deal with is one of my own children developing the habit. This is not my first rodeo catching him with a vape or vape-related devices. The first time, he was caught with a charging device in his backpack at school. He told the assistant principal that “a guy with a hoodie gave it to him to hold.” That's funny - he wears a hoodie every day. Is he the guy with the hoodie?

The second time was when I was cleaning out candy wrappers from his drawers and came across a Juul (vape pen or e-cigarette) - that and about 50 cartridges of pre-filled nicotine liquid containers that plug into the pen. Again, “Not mine mom, some guy was going to get searched at school and asked me to hold it for him.” The boy from school wanted his “shit” back. There was no way I was giving that back, but I trusted my son and let him meet the boy near our house to return it. Hmm? I thought he learned his lesson at school and I thought he learned his lesson when I found the stash in his room, but I thought wrong. The other day I was waking him up for school and reached down to grab a candy wrapper by his bed and there plugged into the wall charging right behind his bed was a bright, shiny blue Juul pen with a cartridge ready to start vaping. I snagged that real quick and locked it in my closet. That was it. Three times and you’re out. He cried and begged for it back. Ready for this? “After the situation with the guy from school, I was curious and wanted to try it. I bought it with my tip money from work. I don’t like it after all. It made me sick. I want to sell it to someone else and get some of my money back.” Bullshit! Is that the addiction talking? Seems like it to me. Not only did we have a good talk about the ramifications of vaping on your health, but he was grounded from seeing friends. I was thinking of making him vape until he threw up in front of me, but then I thought that might be child abuse. I am not sure if he will never do it again.

The popularity for vaping among teens has increased tremendously in the past year. The bragging on social media and the feeling of fitting in seems more important than the major health risks involved with vaping. The fact that vaping is being considered a gateway to smoking marijuana and then using other drugs is devastating. This epidemic is not only out of control, but mind-boggling. We need to find a way to make these minors understand the harsh effects of vaping. Start early with your children. My younger son is 12 and I am going to print information to share with him about the consequences of vaping and smoking cigarettes. I will show him pictures of people’s lungs and videos of people on oxygen or losing parts of their lungs or throat. I will show him what happens to your skin. I only ever spoke about smoking cigarettes to my other children when they were young - vaping did not exist then. My older girls do not smoke cigarettes, so maybe I did something right when they were younger. They tell me vaping missed their generation and they think it is stupid. Maybe it is too late for my older son, but I hope not. I will do whatever it takes for my younger son to know better. But, how can I change the mind of my 15-year-old? Read the article I attached. You can understand how bad it has become. But there is not much research out there on how to protect our youth from this rapid new addiction. Help me devise a go to guide for teachers, parents and children to use and benefit from developing the bad habit of vaping. Let’s do this together!

Read the article from Business Insider here.