Crossing Dundee’s Perth Road towards the Spar this week I realised a boy on a bike was speaking to me.
“Will you buy me a vape?” he said.
“No”, I answered.
“Why not?”
“Because I have three boys and I wouldn’t want anyone buying one for them. It’s not good for you.”
“I’m desperate,” he said, “I really need it.”
The boy, I’d say around 14 years old, held my gaze. I shook my head.
I felt a bit intimidated and, ridiculously, the need to justify myself to this teenager.
I told him I wasn’t being mean – I’d help him if he was in need, but this would be giving something that would do him no good.
He glared. Then, foot on pedal, he pushed himself a few feet forward to the next person.
“‘Scuse me, would you buy me a vape?”
Reflecting on teenage life
We associate vapes as a positive step for adults to wean themselves off cigarettes.
But the odd anecdote or headline points to a whole other group – kids who have never smoked who learn the art of puffing with a ‘harmless’ vape.
How can it be bad for you when it tastes of blueberry, watermelon, strawberry or cherry?
But experts agree that although almost certainly significantly less harmful than smoking tobacco, they aren’t risk free and in many respects, the jury’s still out.
Most contain nicotine, which is highly addictive, as well as other ingredients such as propylene glycol, glycerine and flavourings.
There have also been claims from users that they can cause a condition called popcorn lung which makes breathing difficult (Note – several health agencies dispute this claim).
At this point in writing this column, I took myself for a coffee to have a think. Am I forgetting what life was like when I was a kid?
The truth is, in our early teens we would hang around the Kiosk on the Arbroath Road – and other shops – and ask adults to buy a ‘single’ fag, or the taller ones would try to act old enough to be served themselves.
Can you believe singles were once sold? Affordable even for a youngster’s pocket money.
Gateway to addiction
The marketing of cigarettes started young – we were still in nursery when we were offered our first sweetie cigarettes, remember them?
Three year olds offering friends a candy cig from their pack.
So smoking in our youth, in whatever guise, isn’t new. But, even though the dangers of smoking are now better known, we all knew we shouldn’t be doing it.
It left a bad taste in your mouth and you needed a bottle of Febreze to hide the smell.
The murky mid-ground of vaping (First Minister Humza Yousaf has promised a crackdown on single-use or disposable vapes) is that they’re as tasty as bubble gum and touted as the saviour to cigarette addiction.
But that’s no use if you’re a child with no habit in the first place – and they serve as a gateway to a lifetime of addiction.
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