Young people stop vaping for health, cost and to avoid addiction

This is Quitting, launched by Truth Initiative, is a free, anonymous program to help teens and young adults quit vaping via text message. As of September 2020, the program has helped over 200,000 youth quit e-cigarettes.

The program This is Quitting, launched in January 2019, was created with input from teens, college students, and young adults who have attempted or successfully quit e-cigarettes. The program is tailored by age group to provide teens and young adults with appropriate guidance and advice on quitting vaping products and offers advice and encouragement from other youth who have used the program.

At the start of the program, users were asked to explain why they wanted to quit vaping. The researchers[1] categorized text responses provided by 1,000 youth ages 13 to 17 and 1,000 young adults ages 18 to 24 enrolled in the program between January 18 and February 22, 2019.

The reasons that led young people to want to quit were health (50.9%; “I want my lungs back”), financial cost (21.7%; “I don’t have enough money to finance my addiction”), to free themselves from their addiction (16%; “Vaping is taking over my life”), and social influence (10.1%; “it affects my friendships/people”).

Unlike the factors explaining the initiation to products which refer to a large extent to arguments of an advertising nature, (to experiment / see what it looks like, because it tastes good, to have a good time with my friends etc.), these data comparatively underline a seriousness of the situations raised. According to the authors, the wide range of reasons which motivate young people to want to stop consuming electronic cigarettes - health, financial, social - should be taken into account in public policies and programs to wean them from vaping products. Our broader hope is that these data put a human face on the prevalence statistics and highlight how many of their lives have been negatively impacted, and in various ways, by e-cigarette use. ", write the authors.

Keywords: Vaping, youth, United States, Health

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