Smoke Screen: The DEADLY Truth Behind Teen Vaping | Dr. Alicia Porter

Alicia Porter, guest · [08:37]Yes, and because it's not regulated, they're not answering, to anything because it's just a vape, and it's so much safer. So they're not being subjected to the same rigorous rules, even around advertising. I mean, we don't... Previously, in... When I was young, I remember on TV you had cigarette adverts. You don't have those anymore because it's regulated. Whereas with vaping, you know, you go onto social media, on TikTok, the influencers, it really is just rampant, and I don't think that we are appreciating the dangers, involved and the fact that we don't know, because from one vape to another, you don't know how Much of one you're getting and another. And the problem with nicotine is that it is very addictive, but it's very problematic for the developing brain. The brain develops by the age of 25, and so adding nicotine to that development is problematic because it does impact in terms of impulse control, attention and concentration, and even things like mood and anxiety. It affects all of these processes, but it also primes the brain for addiction. And so there's the thought that, you know, it's a way to stop or a way to prevent. It's actually a gateway. To much bigger problems with addiction later on in life because you're now priming this developing brain, which is very problematic and has long-term consequences that are, that far exceed, you know, what's currently happening.

Jacqueline Aitchison, host · [10:25]I've heard that a few times now, and I've read that a few times now, that, you know, the words you used there, the long, the long-lasting changes. when they speak about specifically the teenage brain and the fact that that prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until mid-twenties, and they speak about exactly what you said, the learning issues, the memory issues, the attention problems, impulse control issues, anxiety, aggression, all of these things. When you say long-lasting changes in brain development, are these permanent changes?

Alicia Porter, guest · [10:55]They are permanent changes because it's, it's kind of like you having, you know, when your brain is developing, you're laying down neural pathways. But you add the nicotine, and the pathway is not the same. It's glitchy. and so that's what's being laid down. So it's like this rerouting of your neural, your neural pathway, and that's permanent because it's being laid down. So that's the track that you're laying, and it's not the same because you've got the added effect of this nicotine. And oftentimes, you know, kids and parents, I mean, I don't think we appreciate the actual effect of that, but if you took a brain that hasn't been exposed to nicotine, and you took a brain that has been exposed, to nicotine, and you do like a PET scan or one of these, isotope scans, there is a stark difference. And you can see the brain that's been exposed and the brain that hasn't been. The colors are different on the brain. You know, they light up differently.

Jacqueline Aitchison, host · [12:02]Can't get out of my mind the amount of times I've seen posts on places like I love Fourways, where you've got a parent coming onto the post saying, my child's under so much pressure from his friends, he's fourteen, so I've just bought him a vape. And I feel like if we are not educating sufficiently about what you've just said, about the permanent impact on a brain, that parent has just given the child an addiction issue for the rest of their lives. Yes. I mean, Is that what we're saying?

Alicia Porter, guest · [12:37]Yes, because it, it, it's not gonna start in adulthood, or most adult problems start average age of fourteen anyway. So our adult problems don't start in adulthood, they actually started during adolescence, and so it's so important what we do during adolescence, because it has long-term consequences. So, you know, even just in terms of, as I say, your attention, concentration, learning, impulsivity, the addictive nature, you're setting yourself or putting this kid at risk for mental health issues, physical health issues later on, in life. And also, you know, I sometimes get quite dramatic and say, you know, ultimately they become less functional, failure to launch, we're gonna contribute because it's gonna actually impact our GDP, and so this is not just a child problem, it's a... It's a societal issue. It's a societal issue because you're going to have non-functioning adults, and it doesn't just start in adulthood. And sometimes people only get help in adulthood, but if you go all the way back, it started when the tracks were being, when the tracks were being laid. Sure. Back to the story in terms of, you know, my child is under pressure, so I gave them a vape. You know, my question would be, maybe we need to actually address the pressure because children or people who vape are more anxious, they are more subject to, anxiety, depression, and even with kids like suicidality. And so, and anxious kids, so it's by di-, you know, it goes in both directions because anxious, you know, kids where there is underlying anxiety, depression, are then more likely to vape as a coping mechanism. and so for me, it's about Yes, there's the vape, but I think it's a symptom of a much bigger problem that we, that we currently facing, particularly with teen, you know, with teenagers.

Jacqueline Aitchison, host · [15:03]Going back to that study that I mentioned, Professor van Salmit at UCT, it was, it was so refreshing to hear the stats that we were getting out of that because, you know, South Africans, we, we get the, the European stats and we get the American stats and the British stats, but we very seldom get stats about what's happening in South Africa. and I found it fascinating to see how his results are correlating pretty much with the rest of the world. You know, they did a... The study was 25,000 learners across 52 fee, fee-paying schools, public schools. He mentioned that there was no real link between the affluence of the demographic, which I found quite interesting, because perhaps because of our environment, we tend to assume that our kids have easier access because they have, you know, the, the financial wherewithal is easier for them, which doesn't seem to be playing out in the research. He was talking about Seventeen percent of those kids admitting to using vapes on a daily basis. And I thought, well, seventeen percent admitting is not probably the, the most accurate number. But it's still a scary... But it's terrifying. I did the math on that. That's four thousand two hundred and fifty children across fifty-two schools who admitted, who admitted to using a vape. Usually you need

Alicia Porter, guest · [16:22]to add about another twenty-five, thirty percent onto that.

Jacqueline Aitchison, host · [16:25]Exactly. That when it comes to... So that was significant right there. Then he said, of that percentage, thirty-eight percent had, vote, they said they vaped every single day, which then in my mind is indicating a dependency on the vape. They asked very interesting questions, like how long between waking up and vaping. And almost fifty percent of them were saying within the first hour. And again, that's speaking to addiction, isn't it? That you can't really get going with your day unless you started taking the nicotine in. So many of them not able to get through a school day. They can't sit for six or seven hours without their nicotine. And then eighty-eight percent said that they used nicotine vapes as opposed to non-nicotine vapes. But is there really a big distinction between the nicotine and the non-nicotine vapes?

Alicia Porter, guest · [17:16]They make the distinction between nicotine and non-nicotine, but the point for me is that neither of them is safer because the non-nicotine vapes have all of these, you know, the flavorants and all of that have these chemicals that are as problematic, if not more so than, you know, than the nicotine. But reading through, Prof and Zale's stats, for me as a mental health professional, it actually speaks to the problem with regards to mental health that we have with particularly teenagers. There's been a significant increase, and I wonder beyond the addiction, whether that's not speaking to the increased levels of anxiety, the increased levels of depression, and even substance, you know, substance usage. And so it is an alarming Statistic, but I think it speaks to a much bigger, issue than just the vaping.

Alicia Porter, guest · [19:32]it's quite different with, with the vape, you know, with the vaping in the sense that, you know, with cigarettes, everybody knew it was wrong. And so parents were, it's wrong and you shouldn't do it and all the rest of it. And even though we knew that we, you know, that people knew that you shouldn't do it, you did it anyway. But it came from a point of, we knew that it was not okay. Whereas with vaping, I feel like it's More of a problem by the fact that we're normalizing something that could be very harmful, and so it adds an additional layer because it's not just having to raise awareness and educate around the harmfulness of vaping, because it's perceived as harmless, so that makes it even more problematic. But I also think it's about then speaking to what is underlying, what is this a symptom of, and how do we then begin to give coping skills? because for me, vaping is a maladaptive coping skill. You are needing to cope. So we need to be thinking around alternatives in terms of how do we teach kids coping skills? How do we teach parents coping skills? because I really think there's an interplay, and the difficulty is that the, you know, parents are struggling at the moment. they're struggling, you know, and I think the reality is we are in uncharted territory. The rules have changed significantly. We don't have a playbook anymore. We can't call anybody. you know, I can't call my mother and ask her about parenting in the digital age because she's had no experience in that. So we are in this uncharted territory, and now we are having to make up the rules as we go. But vaping arrived, the digital space arrived, and we've been left wanting. And so in that kind of anxiety about it, I Think we've become quite permissive, you know, like we were chatting earlier. There's a permissiveness because there's this idea, you know, FOMO is a real thing, even with parenting, you know, fear that my kid, I don't want them to miss out and, you know, so there's this encouraging of peer pressure where previously we'd maybe speak directly to it or recognize it. Everybody wants, you know, nobody wants to be, to be left out, but we're not really thinking about, you know, this, the actual thing that we are promoting, but what is underlying is more important. Do we need to address the anxiety? And the difficulty, particularly with, you know, adolescents, is that anxiety looks so different. You know, it looks like behavior, it looks like outbursts and tantrums and, you know, not wanting to go to school and tummy aches and headaches, you know, so it looks so different, so it can easily be missed.

Unidentified speaker, intro voice or played clip · [24:10]What have we learned from cigarettes? you know, we, cigarettes came out and nobody was against it. There were a lot of health practitioners that signed off saying that cigarettes weren't harmful and then turned out they were lying and that it actually is. And we, we've gone through that whole experience and we've got, programs to wean somebody off of smoking. So those programs exist and they've been developing for many years now and there must be some success with it. How much of that are we doing for vaping? Is it just because we don't know whether it's Reasonable to wear them off because we don't know whether it's unsafe or un- or safe or unsafe. Is that the reason why we're not implementing those programs on a massive, more massive scale in the same way that we do with cigarettes? So what have we learned from cigarettes? Or do we, is that just one anomaly that we don't, we can't draw enough data from to change what we're doing today? Or can we actually do that, and to what extent are we doing that?

Alicia Porter, guest · [25:11]So I think that we can learn lots of lessons from, from cigarettes, but I think that the vaping came very subtly, and it was dressed in very bright colors, and it looked Like it was a safer alternative. So it really came quite disguised, whereas with cigarettes, there was, you know, at the beginning, this open debate about it, and they had to, you know, kind of prove or not. Whereas this came in as a wolf in sheep's clothing, really. But I think, actually, we should be going that way, where we should be looking around policy in terms of, so we need actual policy around vaping like we have with cigarettes. We need to be looking at, even in a school environment, our processes and protocols, and again, policy in that way. But we should be creating awareness with parents, because that's the difference, you know. Back then, our parents were not encouraging us to smoke or condoning smoking or saying it's okay, whereas here, you know, it's the campaigns and the marketing around, vaping. Is very gen, you know, gen X and very sassy and, you know, it's TikTok and the influencers and so they basically have taken the marketing to the market who are the teens, who actually are not at a place that they can distinguish, but then they've also hooked the parents in that it's the lesser of the evil. So actually if my kid vapes, that's okay. But I really think we can actually take a lesson from the cigarette playbook and enforce it where there should be big stickers that says this can cause or no vaping for and, you know, we, we need to be going in that way. But it kind of came with the boom and I think COVID didn't help either because I think it was very smart even the way the marketing arrived and the fact that it's unregulated is very problematic.

Jacqueline Aitchison, host · [44:02]What advice would you have for us as the educators, the people who are involved with the teens every single day, what should we be looking out for? And what steps should we be taking so that we can manage not just the, the code of conduct point of view, but the pastoral point of view as well? We need to start

Alicia Porter, guest · [44:23]having the conversations. And, you know, there is also a myth, you know, parents say, oh, if I talk about it, it's going to make my kid want to do it if I talk about it. Therefore, let's not talk about it. So, like, then we won't have to, to deal with it. But I think talking, because I really think that knowledge is power, and so it's about creating that awareness. And then also just looking deeper than the vape in the hand to the deeper issues that may be, at play in terms of this maybe a kid who is struggling. And it is often hard, not so much for educators, but it's hard for parents to often accept that my child is struggling because it looks so different, because your child can be struggling and they'll still go out with friends. And I often hear that, yeah, but that Okay, and they guard with friends, so they can't be depressed. One and one doesn't equal, so because kids socializing how they present to the outside world is important because where they are developmentally. So it's about having these hard, conversations and creating the awareness, particularly with parents and, you know, in, in the education, space.

Jacqueline Aitchison, host · [45:36]And what advice do you have for the parents who have the fourteen-year-olds who are pressuring them and saying, but all my friends have a vape, and if I go to parties, there's vapes, so I really need to have my own vape. What do you say to them? So, you know, I say that our job

Alicia Porter, guest · [45:51]as parents is to put the boundary. Your fourteen-year-old's job is to push the boundary and to keep pushing the boundary, and even sometimes they burn the boundary, but your job is to hold the boundary, and consistency is key. And yes, they may not like it because nobody likes a boundary, but boundaries keep our kids safe. But a lot of the time, or the lot of the work that we do with parents is getting parents to tolerate the discomfort of having to hold that, that boundary, because you're going to get you the worst mom, I hate you, I this, and it's not personal, it's an attack on, on that, on that boundary. And so boundaries and consistency, connection are key for,