Vaping teen collapses

A Waikato student rapidly choked and collapsed after vaping in his school lunchbreak – he’s since vowed never to touch the stuff again.

The Cambridge High School student was taken to Waikato Hospital last Wednesday, and his caregivers were told vaping was the cause, the school said.

Tighter rules around vaping – including a ban on sales to under18s are on the horizon, with a law change introduced to Parliament yesterday..

The junior student who stopped breathing at Cambridge High is now back in class, and the school has told parents that it felt ‘‘incredibly fortunate’’ he survived.

‘‘We don’t want to dramatise anything like this, but I think that it’s important that when things like that happen, we don’t bury our heads in the sand. Reality is reality,’’ deputy principal, pastoral care and guidance John McDonnell said.

‘‘Our students and our youth need to be aware that this is dangerous. [The student will] never ever do it again, he said. He got the fright of his life.’’

The boy and his parents gave the school permission to use his case to show why its leaders are worried about vaping.

He did not have any pre-existing conditions the school was aware of but had been vaping at lunchtime on Wednesday, right before he choked and collapsed.

A crowd of students gathered, signalling to teachers, and a passing duty teacher got him breathing again before he was taken to hospital by ambulance.

‘‘In this case, whatever the substance was, it wasn’t appropriate for a youth to be inhaling and vaping,’’ McDonnell said. Vaping is a fad that many students see as a a harmless alternative to cigarettes, he said, but it will be years before we know the long-term effects.

‘‘We’ve got 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds who have never smoked in their life and they’re vaping,’’ he said.

‘‘You can’t tell me that’s healthy.’’

Vaping is less harmful than smoking, but not harmless, Ministry of Health advice says, and people should only vape to quit smoking.