Credit: Marine Buffard for NPR
Parents, have you talked to your kids about vaping nicotine yet?
If you have an older kid or a teenager, it’s likely they will encounter e-cigarettes at some point. They often contain more nicotine than regular cigarettes, which makes them highly addictive (and harmful to health). And with fruit and candy flavors, they’re marketed in a way that’s appealing to teens.
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They’re also popular among young people in the United States. More than 2.1 million middle and high school students reported that they currently use e-cigarettes in a 2023 survey conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
You can help protect your child from vaping by being “the first person to have that conversation with them. It’s in their benefit to hear what your expectations are,” says Dr. Deepa Camenga, a pediatrician and addiction medicine specialist with the Yale School of Medicine.
Here are some pointers on how parents can broach the topic — and what to do if you find out your child is vaping.
Start talking to your children about vaping early
Start these conversations before children reach their teenage years, says Camenga. Young kids are often exposed to vaping through the media, observing it in public or seeing their friends do it. Use that exposure to open up a dialogue in age-appropriate ways.
Camenga shares example prompts for different age groups.
For an elementary school-aged child: Ask them if they’ve heard about e-cigarettes or vaping in health class in school, and if so, what they learned about them. Then explain that e-cigarettes contain a lot of dangerous chemicals that can hurt your brain and body.
For a middle schooler: Start the conversation by explaining that you read an article about how some middle schoolers are using vapes. Then ask if they’ve ever seen anyone vape at school and what they think about that.
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For teens: As they get older, share more details about its health impacts. Vaping is linked to wheezing symptoms and lung injuries, says Camenga. Some substances found in e-cigarette aerosols have been linked to an increased risk for cancer. And we don’t know the long-term effects of vaping on adolescent health and development, she adds.
Set expectations
Make your expectations clear to your child that they won’t vape. Camenga says you might say, “I know you might see kids vaping at school or on the bus. E-cigarettes are super addictive and contain a lot of unhealthy and dangerous chemicals. I love you and want you to always be healthy. So I want to make sure you understand the risks so you can make healthy choices.”
Help them figure out strategies to avoid vaping
That could include making an excuse to get out of a social situation where other kids are vaping, coming up with ways to turn down someone who offers them a vape or changing the topic of conversation, says Camenga.
If your discover your child is vaping, stay calm
When you get upset, yell or confront your child in an aggressive manner, it can send the message that you don’t care and it decreases their ability to hear you, says Camenga.
The calmer you are, the likelier your child will talk to you and be open to suggestions, she says. Make sure they know they have your support by saying something like, “How can I help? I noticed this and I’m concerned about it.”
Understand what is driving the behavior
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, strongly recommends that teens who are vaping get screened for any underlying condition that could be driving their desire to use. Children who are struggling in school or who feel depressed or anxious may try to self-medicate by vaping nicotine, she says.
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“So if [your] teenager is already vaping, [you] need to understand what is driving that behavior and to rule out that there may be, say, a problem with attention or anxiety,” Volkow says.
Then keep checking in with your child, says Camenga. Because the rates of vaping are so high among teens — and these products are incredibly addictive — one-time use isn’t something you can count on.
What to do if your child is addicted to e-cigarettes and wants to quit
Using a vape a few times doesn’t mean your child is addicted. But the more they vape, the more likely they are to get addicted. Signs of a vaping addiction include wanting to quit but continuing to vape anyway, feeling anxious or irritable when they can’t vape, thinking about vaping when doing other activities and feeling like they’ve lost control over how much they vape.
If your child tells you they want to quit, affirm their decision and tell them you will support them through this ordeal, says Camenga. That recognition goes a long way.
Then help them understand it will be a hard road ahead. It can take adult cigarette smokers multiple attempts to quit, says Camenga — so it’s to be expected that a teen might quit and then start vaping again.
Because vaping nicotine is a relatively new problem, Volkow says we’re still trying to figure out how to help teens quit. The medications typically given to adults to help them quit smoking haven’t been shown to work as effectively in teens.
But medication isn’t the only option. A therapist or other health care provider can help teenagers understand their addiction. They can help them figure out “the factors leading them to continue vaping when they no longer want to do it,” says Volkow.
The digital story was edited by Malaka Gharib and Carmel Wroth. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected].
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