A peek inside the mind of an underage vaper shows why vaping has become so pervasive, and so hard to combat
Editor’s note: The name of the story’s interviewee has been changed in order to protect her from self-incrimination and/or poor public perception.
The age of majority may be 21 to vape, according to state and local law, but that doesn’t stop many people from starting young.
Hailey, age 18, started vaping her sophomore year of high school when she was 16.
“That’s when I started driving and going to school more and working two jobs,” she said. “It’s kind of like a stress reliever. I find myself driving easier when I have it in my hand.”
She initially chose cigarettes when she was 15, then switched to vaping from a “mod.”
She started with cigarettes because she has a father and older brother who smoke, she said.
Hailey made the switch to vaping due to the stigma around cigarettes and their smoke, especially at work in the food service industry, where she interacted with the public on a regular basis.
“People were looking at me weird. Or your breath stinks or your shirt smells, or — I have a lot of hair — so your hair smells. I was just spraying myself with perfume all the time. It was almost embarrassing. I decided that vaping was the way to go … even though it’s a nasty habit,” she said, with a quick laugh at her last comment.
While her smoking habit made her red in the face, she said that vaping is common enough among the high school population to not be so demonized. Even among youth, smoking and cannabis use are common enough to not make her an unusual case.
Hailey maintained the habit while she was younger by buying single cigarettes for around a quarter a piece off friends.
“Now, you can kind of get e-juice wherever,” she said.
She said getting it online was easy. Once she turned 18, she was able to find the local stores that would sell it to her.
Driving is one of the main reasons she keeps up the habit, commuting to her jobs every day is easier with it. For many people who smoke and vape, being in the car is an almost natural place to take a drag.
“In the car, I have it on my lap at all times,” she said. “It’s also a quick fix on my lunch break. Like, stress gone.”
Socially, she said vaping hadn’t really led her to making any new friends who also vape, but she does often have people come up to join her on her breaks.
“I feel like a lot of people will come to me and be like, ‘Hey, can I have a cigarette?’ Or, ‘Hey, can we smoke together? Hey, let’s vape together.’ Even though it’s not a big deal. Like vaping is not even the hugest deal but people will still ask. And it’s like, ‘If you want’,” she said.
Cloudy culture
There is a part of vaping that is focused on the large, billowing clouds exhaled, which can be much thicker than cigarette smoke and heavy enough to roll across surfaces like tabletops when indoors. Some have even turned this “clouding” into competitions.
In order to make such large clouds, mods need to be used as opposed to vape pens, as a large amount of juice put into a mod can be aerosolized at a fast enough rate to create the look.
“When I used to smoke cigarettes, it was no big deal how big your cloud was,” Hailey said. “Then I got a small vape and I see all these people with big vapes and I said, ‘I’m going to get me one of those.’”
She said the mods themselves look cool in addition to the large clouds put out. She said that advertisements influenced her viewpoint, as they use sex appeal associated with the mod products.
The new, stylized vape products like those that resemble guitar picks or flash drives “look silly” to Hailey and they can be very expensive. Though that high price point can also be a point of pride.
“It’s just another thing, like you want to have the coolest clothes, you want to have the coolest car,” she said.
Price to Pay
Acquiring a mod and continuously buying juice for it is not cheap, according to Hailey.
“I spent about like $95 on the bottom, $45 on the top and then it’s about $50 for two 60 milligram bottles and I do two 60 mill bottles a week in juice,” she said. “A few hundred dollars a month.”
Like many who vape, Hailey enjoys the flavors offered in the many juices.
“I’m obsessed with strawberry pucker. There’s so many different ones. There’s mango, there’s unicorn stuff now, it’s crazy. And people are like, ‘I want to try that now, just because,’” she said. “I think that’s another reason why people vape. There’s so many flavors and so many options.”
She said she prefers just buying vape juice as it is easier, but has also tried her friends’ concoctions made at home and said she hasn’t had any bad experiences with those, either.
Vaping is much smoother as well, she said, as opposed to cigarettes. She also said that the juice she vapes isn’t as strong as a cigarettes in terms of nicotine concentration.
Learning Curve
Preventative education on vaping wasn’t much of a focus when she went to school, she said. She said she’s heard it’s changed in the last year but when she went, the focus was more on cigarettes.
“They teach you, that’s bad, that can kill you, show you all these lung cancer things like that,” she said.
When she started, she said that the fact it is against the law had no influence on her decision making.
As far as education outreach beyond the school system, she said it hasn’t caught her attention. What she has noticed are the many forms of advertisements for the products.
“I’ve seen advertisements, but nothing in the opposite direction,” she said.
She said she hasn’t seen any negative health effects over the two-plus years she’s vaped.
“I don’t see it as much of a health issue at all. I mean I guess when I’m like 60 years old it could influence me. I have a grandparent who smoked all her life and now she cannot eat a meal without smoking afterwards, or like, take a walk without smoking. But I don’t see myself going in that direction, or I just don’t care about when I’m 60,” she said.
She did say that it’s unlikely that she will ever go back to smoking, which is the fear of many working to prevent underage vaping.
“It’s not that I have to much against smoking cigarettes but I just don’t like the way people look at you,” she said.
Can’t Stop?
The path to addiction can be unclear for young people just starting down the path.
“I’ve asked my friends, ‘Are you addicted? Do you think you’re addicted?’ Because I was wondering for myself. I asked them, ‘Do you think I’m addicted?’” Hailey said. “Most of them said, ‘No, I can quite at any time.’ They just like it.”
She said seeing addiction is more about whether health effects happen at an early age. If she get into her 20s and starts having respiratory problems, she said she’s done with it.
“Since I don’t see any bad things about it, I’m like, whatever,” she said.
Hailey said she probably wouldn’t go back in time and tell herself not to start vaping, though she would go back and not start smoking. Since smoking led to vaping for Hailey, that could have the butterfly effect of her never vaping, she supposed.
