Forum Clears Air On Vaping and Cannabis

Mar 4, 2019 | 6:00 AM

E-cigarette use is on the rise in the Vernon School District and many others, with students in some schools vaping in bathrooms and hallways.

The increase is alarming to school and health officials who feel many young people don’t realize the health effects.

“We first noticed this a couple years ago and began asking questions about it. It’s certainly been on the rise, not just in the surveys we’ve taken, but in the experience of the District and the some of the problems they’ve experienced with kids using e-cigarettes and Juuls (specific brand name) in schools,” says University of BC Okanagan Psychology Professor Dr. Marvin Krank.

Krank says a single pod can include as much nicotine as an entire pack of regular cigarettes.

“They are not as benign as people might think they are. They have fewer carcinogens than tobacco products, but there are chemicals in these and it’s really important to note that nicotine is part of the package along with other chemicals,” Krank tells Beach Radio News in an interview.

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Krank says a Juul, which looks like a computer memory stick, has become very popular with young people.

“According to their own description, it contains up to 40 milligrams of nicotine in a single pod which is actually as much nicotine as you would get in an entire package of cigarettes, and that’s very worrying.”

The professor says there has been a big shift in people switching from e-cigs to regular ones once they become addicted to the nicotine.

“So we’re seeing a rise in cigarette smoking that we haven’t seen for many years. Certainly the last few decades have been a steady decrease in cigarette smoking.”

Krank will speak about the issue Tuesday March 5 at 7 pm at Vernon Secondary School, a free presentation put on by School District 22, that everyone is welcome to attend.

“We will certainly dispel some of the myths, and talk about the extent of the problem. I am going to talk about marketing to children and young people because that’s one of the big problems in vaping.”

The doctor will also be talking about the impact of cannabis legalization on young people.

“We know that for young people, cannabis has significant risks on the developing nervous system. For a certain group of individuals, there are risks of inducing psychotic like behaviour. It’s small, but it does happen.”

Krank says there is also evidence that suggests it impacts the development of the front cortex, even impacting some development of the brain.

“There is a tendency to believe now than cannabis is legal that somehow it is safe and is actually even healthy. There is no good evidence that cannabis that actually even healthy. There is no good evidence that cannabis is particularly healthy. There are some medical conditions where it might have some positive impact, like pain for example and epilepsy. (But) there is kind of misrepresentation that somehow you should smoke cannabis now because its healthy when in fact that’s kind of a misrepresentation.”

by Corey Fischer