An increasing number of Burnaby secondary students are “vaping,” and it is sometimes happening right under teachers’ noses.
Vaping is puffing on electronic cigarettes (also know as e-cigs, or vape pens), which release a steam-like vapour.
Electronic cigarettes, which are marketed as smoking cessation devices, come in various shapes, sizes and flavours. Some resemble real cigarettes, complete with an end that lights up to simulate burning tobacco while others look like oversized pens.
It is the pen variety some Burnaby teens said they see kids smoking, sometimes right in school.
“You see random puffs of smoke sometimes, and I have actually seen them in our classrooms, students trying to hide them from the teachers,” said Sydney Landrie, a Grade 10 student at Moscrop Secondary.
Another Moscrop student, Csaba Laszlo, said he started noticing kids using electronic cigarettes at school about three months ago.
“It is really out in the open,” he said.
Electronic cigarettes were recently banned in Vancouver schools, and the Fraser Health Authority is currently contacting all its school superintendents to make them aware of concerns around electronic cigarettes and to recommend the devices be added to the school smoking bans.
According to the Burnaby school district spokesperson, Burnaby has no plans for a specific electronic cigarette ban for Burnaby schools because the current smoking ban covers all types of smoking.
“The safety of (electronic cigarettes) has not been demonstrated,” said Fraser Health’s medical health officer Helena Swinkels.
“There are many compounds in them and some compounds, including for example propylene glycol, have been shown to be respiratory irritants and, with longer term exposure, has been shown to be associated with asthma and other respiratory difficulty in children,” she said.
Of further concern to the health authority is that teens may be getting exposed to nicotine without even knowing it.
“In Canada, nicotine-containing solutions are not legal, but there are many stores that do sell them and studies have shown some (devices) that say they don’t contain nicotine, actually do,” she said.
What is most troubling to Swinkels is, according to some American studies, 10 per cent of youth who use these devices never smoked before they picked one up.
“So it is not kids who are quitting, who are using them,” she said.
Those youth who are buying the electronic cigarettes as a way to quit smoking may be misguided as well, Swinkels said, because there is no real evidence they help people kick the habit.
Seventeen-year-old Mason Raymer said while he has not seen kids smoking inside his school, St. Thomas More Collegiate, he has seen them smoking off the school grounds. He said electronic cigarettes are readily available at stores near the school and because they come in bright colourful packaging and tasty fruit flavours they seem to be marketed directly to teens.
“I have seen them in your face at 7-Elevens, so in a way they almost seem to be trying to entice people to buy them, and people think because they aren’t real cigarettes that it is fine to use them without consequence,” he said.
Electronic cigarettes are sold at most convenience stores and can retail for as little as $10. Though there is no legal age restriction on electronic cigarettes, most stores, including 7-Eleven, Mac’s Convenience Stores and London Drugs, have a policy of not selling the devices to anyone under 19.
Raymer said he doesn’t really understand why kids try electronic cigarettes.
“I guess they just think they are cool,” he said.
