Vaping Offers Alternative to Smoking But Still Poses Risks
Health
VAPING PRACTICES: Photo illustration shows someone using an electronic cigarette. Courtesy University of Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth
By TEAGAN GUY/Talon Contributor
It is a Saturday evening and people are strolling through downtown Tyler enjoying live music. Outside a restaurant, the smell of food is accompanied by the smell of berries. A plume of smoke indicates that the fresh berry smell is coming from someone who is vaping.
“I personally don’t vape,” Jordan Phillips, a UT Tyler student, said. “I don’t really know much about it. I have a few friends that do it socially and I don’t suppose that’s the worst thing. … I have heard some terrible things over the years about vapes burning up lungs.”
“Vape Violations,” an article by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf in the journal Inside Higher Ed , notes that electronic cigarettes are becoming more popular among college students and suggests how colleges can incorporate vaping in their anti-smoking policies.
According to the university’s website, “To promote the health, well-being and safety of university students, faculty, staff and visitors,” UT Tyler is a tobacco-free campus.
“All forms of tobacco are not permitted on the UT Tyler main campus, branch campuses, and any property owned by UT Tyler. This includes, but is not limited to: cigarettes, cigars, pipes, water pipes (hookah), bidis, kreteks, electronic cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, snuff, chewing tobacco and all other tobacco products” the policy states.
Savannah Mitchell, a UT Tyler, health and kinesiology health education major, said she does not believe that vaping is a problem at UT Tyler but it is a problem for some people.
She said she knows someone who suffers from nicotine addiction from vaping and said that among the health risks she associates with vaping are lung cancer and cancers in the mouth.
“I feel like vapes are just as bad (as cigarettes) but could help some get off cigarettes,” Mitchell said.
In 2020, UT Tyler launched efforts to investigate what it labeled as “the vaping epidemic among East Texas teenagers.”
In partnership with the UT Health Science Center-Tyler, the Fisch College of Pharmacy began gathering information on use of and attitudes about nicotine and vaping among students in East Texas school districts as part of plan to create a “comprehensive adolescent tobacco cessation and reduction program,” said information released by the university.
Educating students about dangers of vaping is part of a strategy recommended by the American College Health Association to reduce use of vaping. The association also recommends”
- teaching student affairs workers and student health=care providers about vaping;
- raising awareness for tobacco-free campus regulations;
- and releasing data on vaping use.