East Hartford Youth Services Vaping Prevention Campaign to begin in January 2021:
East Hartford, CT— The East Hartford Youth Services is launching a vaping prevention social media campaign starting January 2021.
According to the Connecticut Department of Public Health, “before electronic cigarettes hit the U.S. market about 10 years ago, Connecticut was making progress in decreasing nicotine use among young people. About one in four teens were smoking cigarettes in 2000, but by 2017, that number dropped to only 3.5% of school-aged students statewide, according to state reports. Then e-cigarettes, or vaping, became popular among middle and high school students. Vaping (e-cigarette) is now the most commonly used tobacco product among youth.”
Research shows that vaping can be dangerous, highly addictive, and harmful to a youth’s health and brain development. Like all other addictions, it’s easier for youth to not start than try to stop, once they are hooked.
Get the facts, so you can start the conversation with your child. To help start the conversation East Hartford Youth Services will share:
- Facts about Vaping: Each week Youth Services will be sharing Vaping Prevention Facts on their Facebook page @EHYSB
- Vaping Prevention Videos: Over the next 4 months Youth Service will make available a streaming video for East Hartford parents, students (grade 7 and up) as well as any resident who is interested in learning more about the risks related to vaping.
January's video: “VAPING: More Dangerous Than You Think” is twenty (20) minutes long. It focuses on the current trend of vaping drugs (nicotine, alcohol, liquid marijuana, and others). It features interviews with teen users and professionals, which demonstrate the serious health risks of vaping. The video explores and explains how substances vaped impact brain function and talk about various dangers associated with vaping, vaping pens, and vaping liquids.
February's video: “Vaping and Viruses: Your Lungs, Your Life” is seventeen (17) minutes long. This video aims to expose the scary truths about the risks to a young person's lungs due to vaping. It talks about how vaping hurts your lungs and depresses your immune system, which is a combo that may put you at higher risk for complications from viral infections of all kinds, including Covid-19. Experts will explain how vaping compromises your lung health leaving your lungs vulnerable to pathogens and even “wet lung” syndrome where vape fluids collect in the lungs and make breathing difficult.
March's video: "Nicotine and the Developing Brain" is eighteen (18) minutes long. This video aims to explore how the use of vaping devices such as JUUL has reached epidemic proportions among adolescents and even preteens. Many young people are unaware that most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, a highly addictive chemical that can harm brain development. In this program, diverse adolescents describe how they became addicted to nicotine as a result of vaping. A neuroscientist and physician explain how nicotine changes the still-developing adolescent brain and can harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood, and impulse control. Viewers learn that changes in the brain resulting from nicotine also make the brain more susceptible to addiction to other substances and that young people who use e-cigarettes are more likely to smoke tobacco cigarettes in the future.
**CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE THIRD VIDEO**
April's video is a departure from videos centering the dangers of vaping. This month we want to share an informational video about the dangers of Fentanyl. Fentanyl is dubbed "The Deadliest Opioid." Over the last several years we've learned more and more about the dangers of overuse and misuse of opioid drugs. Fentanyl has been responsible for a lot of the accidental overdose deaths across America. Fentanyl and other opioid drugs are used in medical settings frequently when a person is having surgery done or has experienced a very painful, traumatic injury. However, as with the liquids found in vaping capsules, people have taken to making Fentanyl on their own in all manner of environments without full knowledge or understanding of what they are doing. It takes very little of this extremely strong opioid drug to kill a person and drug dealers have taken to mixing it into other drugs like heroin and marijuana. This video will speak directly to young people in a way they will understand and will deliver a strong "no use" message while exposing the hidden dangers of fentanyl-laced substances.
**CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FOURTH VIDEO**
3. Anti-Vaping/Prevention Materials: Youth Services will distribute informational materials locally to organizations that can then distribute them to East Hartford youth and families.
Even though vaping has been promoted as being safer than smoking cigarettes, youth and their families need to know that it’s not risk-free and be aware of significant risk factors associated with vaping. Follow East Hartford Youth Services on Facebook @EHYSB to get notified once new content is published.