Too many Canadian teens are vaping and that's a big problem

Tens of thousands of Canadian teens have taken up vaping as their vice of choice and it could be a big problem according to one expert that thinks we've crossed the threshold of the vaping fad. 

David Hammond is a Public Health Professor at the University of Waterloo and recently spoke to CBC News about what can be done about the crisis of teen vaping in Canada. 

"The numbers have confirmed that Canada has one of the highest youth vaping rates in the world, especially as it relates to daily vaping," Hammond explained in his interview referring to a new survey from Health Canada.

"We've essentially plateaued at historically high levels of daily vaping,” Hammond said, adding that we’re in this the long haul. “We've crossed the threshold of this being a fad." 

According to CBC News, the number of teens vaping is higher now than it was in 2016-17 when government data showed 10% of teenagers had vaped in the previous 30 days.

Those numbers were up significantly in the latest version of Health Canada’s Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drugs survey—though it did show some promising data. 

The survey polled 61,096 teenagers ranging from Grades 7 to 12 between September 2001 and June 2022 and found 29% of teens had tried vaping with or without nicotine.

This number was down from the previous year's survey, which found that 34% of teens in the same groups had tried an e-cigarette, again with or without nicotine in the device. 

In the 2020-21 survey, 17% of teenagers said that had vaped in the 30 days preceding their polling, which had also decreased from the 2018-19 numbers at 20% of students. 

According to the survey, older teens in Grades 10 to 12 were more likely to have used a vaping device within the previous 30 days at 24% while only 10% of students in Grades 9 to 10 said they did. 

Interestingly, the proportion of students using e-cigarettes was higher among female students at 19% and students who identified as transgendered or gender diverse at a total of 18%. 

While the numbers may not seem concerning, some experts are worried that the decrease in vaping teens is only momentary and that the trends are pointing towards a big uptick. 

“Rates did go down slightly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” explained St. Justine Children’s Hospital Pediatrician Dr. Nicholas Chadi to Global News. 

Dr. Chadi pointed out that the pandemic in Canada brought out social rules restricting the country’s youth from gathering which also limited the number of opportunities teens had to be introduced to e-cigarettes or use them in a social context. 

“Those limitations and rules are no longer in place. So what we expected was to see a bit of an uptick after that.” Dr. Chandi added. 

The Canadian Cancer Society is also worried vaping will rise and the organization’s senior policy analyst Rob Cunningham noted that while the new data showing a decrease in vaping rates was positive, the current rate is still “extremely high."

“This data is very concerning,” Cunningham said according to Global News, “in part because Canada has among the highest rates of youth vaping in the world, including daily youth vaping.”

Cunningham brought up a similar 2020 vaping study from the University of Waterloo and noted that in that research, teenage vaping rates stood at 12%—which he said was a “sign that addiction is setting in” according to Global News. 

Whether or not the federal government should ban e-cigarettes is outside the scope of this article. But all the facts seem to suggest that some policy solution should be adopted to help curve Canada’s youth away from using vaping devices.