NHS Wales Study Shows Children Are Smart About Vaping
Primary school children have more understanding about the health benefits of e-cigarettes than their own government.
Remember the Welsh Government has been vehemently anti-vaping for some time now with plans to ban flavours and vaping in public narrowly defeated.
OK a new survey carried out by NHS Wales tries its hardest to spin the results to their own way of thinking – as in vaping is the work of the devil – but these little kids are really switched on 😉
You’ll see what I mean by that in a minute.
OK the survey was a joint enterprise with researchers from the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University and is one of the first designed to look at children’s perceptions of e-cigarettes.
95% of them can ‘distinguish’ between e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes – with many thinking vaping is much safer than regular smoking.
This little nugget is in the first few lines of the study results and published on NHS Wales’ website.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
Aren’t Welsh children amazing at being to tell the difference between a vape pen and a Lambert and Butler!
And come to that they actually think vaping is safer than smoking despite all the fake news and scaremongering from their own government!
It Ain’t The Vape Industry Targeting Kids!
Here comes the spin…
The author of this particular blog post is obviously at pains to hurry past this revelation with a few of those bullet points of doom including:
- 94% of the children acknowledged the harmful effects of smoking but that children had little understanding of any health harms of electronic cigarettes.
- Some younger children for example, mistook the fruit flavours as being an indication that the e-liquids contained fruit and were therefore healthy.
And what proven health harms might they be one wonders compared to the known and proven carcinogens inside lit cigarettes?
And how about educating the kids that we’re not actually vaping on an apple in the same way we’re not eating apple flavoured sweets rather than snigger at their misconceptions?
And how about this hurried cover-up if you like of the kids believing e-cigarettes and vaping was healthier than smoking:
The researchers observed that an underlying theme throughout the findings was that children described electronic cigarettes as being ‘better’ and ‘healthier’ than tobacco cigarettes.
While this is certainly the case for adult smokers who are trying to reduce their harm from smoking, there is clear international consensus that non-smokers, particularly children and young people should not use e-cigarettes.
Check out that last paragraph.
Non-smokers and children are not who the vaping industry is targeting – if anything it’s Big Tobacco that targets those two groups internationally.
Take for instance the latest figures on kids smoking from the World Health Organisation no less who are not exactly pro-vaping themselves:
Between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start smoking every day – roughly half of whom live in Asia.
Shocking – absolutely shocking statistics.
Like I said where is Big Tobacco currently pushing smoking…
There’s a raft of evidence out there right now showing that whilst nothing is 100% safe – vaping and e-cigarettes are 95% safer than smoking – probably more – fact.
Like I said these little kids are certainly more au fait with vaping than both their Government and indeed NHS Wales.
Some of that understanding say the researchers is down to at least 1/5th of those questioned having ‘exposure to e-cigarettes’ through family and friends at home.
This they say has given those children a clear perception that vaping is healthier than smoking and so giving them an edge over their peers.
I could argue here that I’d rather have a generation of kids brought up in a vaping household than a smoking family given we know a tiny majority of children will try smoking.
Surely the more acceptable vaping is as a healthier option at an early age – the less kids will smoke?
It’s almost as if the authors have had to leave the spin that vaping is the devil’s work aside with their key recommendations of how to educate the kids:
- Including evidence based electronic cigarette education as part of the education curriculum of Welsh primary schools to address gaps in knowledge.
- Health messaging efforts should reinforce children’s views that electronic cigarettes are devices to help people quit tobacco cigarettes, but they are not without harm.
- More research is required to understand how primary school children’s perceptions can influence future vaping behaviour.
Not too bad however that last point has I think been covered.
Educate Don’t Legislate!
The results show those children in vaping households have a greater understanding of the healthier option of e-cigarettes than those in homes with smokers.
Surely then it would make sense for NHS Wales and in particular the Welsh Government to stop all the scaremongering blatant negativity around vaping in order to get future generations away from smoking?
Lead author of the study – Dr Lorna Porcellato from John Moores University said:
As one of the first global studies to investigate electronic cigarettes in the context of childhood, this research contributes unique and important insights to an underdeveloped body of knowledge.
Primary school children represent an important cohort. Understanding how they conceptualise electronic cigarettes prior to experimentation is imperative for the development of effective health promotion interventions that highlight potential risks and prevent uptake in young never smokers.
Meanwhile co-author Dr Alisha Davies from Public Health Wales said:
This research provides a valuable insight into children’s perceptions of electronic cigarettes, family influences on their knowledge and understanding. Reinforcing the message that electronic cigarettes support people to stop smoking is important, alongside addressing gaps in children’s knowledge about potential harms.
The last couple of generations has been bombarded with facts about the harms of lit tobacco and smoking has – particularly in the west – shown a sharp decline particularly in the young.
It’s my old adage again that education is better than legislation and if these young children are anything to go by then future generations particularly in more developed countries will turn their backs on the killer habit.
I keep coming back to that figure of 100,000 children in Asia taking up smoking each day…
It’s not vaping that’s hooking our kids – its Big Tobacco and shame shame on them.
You can read the full NHS Report: Is It All Smoke Without Fire? Here.