Getting caught vaping helped me kick habit

Grade 9 students in the Collective Voice program at Aden Bowman Collegiate share their lives and opinions through columns. Selected columns run each Monday in The Saskatoon Starphoenix.

I got caught vaping a few months ago.

At first I was mad that I got caught, because I had spent a lot of money on it and now I couldn’t even sell the vape. My $100 vape was just sitting in the trash.

The more I think about it, I am happy I got caught so I had an excuse to quit. I was doing it a lot and I didn’t really want to do it anymore. Getting caught was a great way to get out.

Most of you have seen or heard people talking about vaping, but how should we feel about it? Vaping has become extremely popular among teens in high school, even though everybody always tells us that vaping is so bad for us.

Compared to smoking cigarettes, vaping is practically like breathing oxygen. One cigarette has between 10 and 20 milligrams of nicotine and most vapes have a lower amount. The biggest difference between cigarettes and vaping is that cigarettes have tar.

Given this information, most teens I know probably feel better about vaping as opposed to smoking cigarettes, but how should we feel about vaping as opposed to doing nothing ? Of course vaping is going to be worse, but how much worse is it?

There are a lot of dangers with vaping, and the biggest is what you are putting in your lungs. Experts haven’t really discovered what vaping will do to you yet, which is sort of scary because you think you’re doing something that isn’t that bad. Teens want to vape because we think it looks cool and we are not thinking about the longterm effects like what will happen to our lungs.

Some of the worst longterm effects of vaping are cancer, lung disease and heart disease, and those are only three of many long-term effects. I hear a lot of teens my age say things like, “I know this is bad but I won’t get cancer or I won’t get heart disease,” but when you vape you just increased those odds.

I started vaping because everybody else was doing it and I wanted to fit in. Getting caught is easy, but quitting is hard. If you are vaping, I suggest you quit before you get caught. Even though telling your friends that you are quitting is hard, it is a lot better than your parents finding out.