In high schools vaping is becoming a huge issue among students. According to the FDA, e-cigarettes, or vapes, are now the most frequently used tobacco product among adolescents, about 2.1 million middle and high school students were e-cigarette users in 2017. Electronic cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or e-vaporizers, are battery-operated devices that people use to inhale typically nicotine, flavorings, and other chemicals.
The e-cigarette turns the liquid nicotine into a mist to be inhaled into the person’s lungs where it gives the same effects (light-headiness, increased heart-rate, false dopamine), and this e-cigarette can be easily carried and hidden by the smoker. Students are using vapes to get the nicotine high without using a real cigarette with it’s quick symptoms. The child-like advertisements used to sell e-cigarettes and their ‘juices’ (flavors), attracts the child’s mind with the colors, smells, and candy tastes. It’s a silent, but deadly approach made by the smokers subconscious mind that has been addicted to the nicotine from the first inhale.

Plus, the social use of vaping making it look normal and like-able. “I’ll admit I did try it for the aesthetic and how popular it was. I stopped after a bit because it wasn’t doing anything good to me for me to continue,” commented senior Ivette Hernandez.
Nicotine will run through the smokers life and make it depend on how they feel while smoking nicotine. The e-cigarettes makes it easier for a smoker to get a hold of the nicotine when and where ever they need, including the middle of class. The smokers will start smoking in a more regular sense, they begin to connect their smoking routines with their daily and social activities, creating triggers and making it hard to do those activities without smoking. Routine smoking causes their body to adapt to having a level of nicotine flowing through their body and without realizing it, they smoke in order to maintain their bodies needed nicotine level. This happens to anyone smoking nicotine, but it’s majorly worse and has a longer effect for any juveniles. “ I started because of peer pressure but then I stopped because I saw people starting to die ,” said junior Devon Price.

Students smoking under the age of 18, are stunting their brain growth and slowly killing it, before it’s fully grown. The nicotine changes the way the brain should be when fully developed, it will affect how the smoker will pay attention and control their emotions. The brain is not fully developed until the age of 25 and anything that has a bad effect on it can ruin how it will finish growing in all.
In 2016 the FDA decided to regulate e-cigarettes, containing nicotine derived from tobacco, they are now subject to government regulation as tobacco products, including the requirement that both in-store and online purchasers be at least 18 years of age. In a report by the FDA, they state that in 2018, 4.9 percent of middle schooler’s reported using electronic cigarettes, and 20.8 percent of high schoolers reported the same. Even though the government is slapping a light restriction on the e-cigarette issues, children are still finding ways to get the nicotine their body is begging for. More and more students are becoming addicted to vaping the horrible toxins found in the juices for the pods, slowly they are throwing their healthy future away and following a dark path of nicotine addiction.