Deaths spark alarm over US teenage vaping epidemic

‘There was pneumonia in both lungs. The doctor said it looked like no pneumonia he’d ever seen.’

An electronic-cigarette vaping craze is sweeping some US high schools with deadly results. Picture: AFP

The warnings had been given in school assemblies and in leaflets to parents but now they have taken on a greater urgency.

E-cigarettes, the battery-powered devices that release a vapour that would not set off a bathroom smoke detector, have become ubiquitous in New York’s high schools, according to two surveys.

They are common even in middle schools, which cater for children aged 11 to 13 — despite a report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that links them to six deaths and 380 cases of lung illness.

In Dallas, Whitney Livingstone, a 17-year-old pupil who has been vaping for two years, was taken into hospital with a fever two weeks ago. “She could have almost died,” Jennifer Audas, her mother, told a local television station. “There was pneumonia in both lungs. The doctor said it looked like no pneumonia he’d ever seen.”

She added: “You think, cigarettes, you’re going to get cancer, so this is healthier. That’s the way it’s portrayed.”

A spate of unexplained illnesses has prompted calls for a nationwide ban on flavoured e-cigarettes. The CDC said that most patients have reported using e-cigarette products that contained THC, a principal constituent of cannabis, though some had used e-cigarettes that contained only nicotine.

It has been suggested that vitamin E acetate, found in skin lotions, was being used by black-market producers to bulk up products because of a shortage of cannabis oil. Though safe when applied to the skin, it is not meant to be inhaled.

Ned Sharpless, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said that tests were under way on “a broad range of chemicals but no one substance, including vitamin E acetate, has been identified in the samples tested.”

E-cigarette makers have pinned the blame on illegal producers. “Evidence shows that black-market THC tainted with thick oil is causing the lung crisis in the US,” the New York State Vapour Association said in a statement. “Nicotine e-liquid has been on the market for 12 years with no issues except health improvement for smokers.”

Prominent e-cigarette manufacturers have denied marketing their products to teenagers, arguing that they only targeted smokers with a product that could save their lives. Over the US summer, however, a congressional committee investigating youth vaping released details of school prevention programs sponsored by the e-cigarette maker Juul, and suggested that their effect was rather to make pupils more familiar with the product.

In New York, state health officials have blamed aggressive marketing of e-cigarettes with flavours such as mint chocolate, bubble gum and cherry cola that seemed likely to appeal to teenagers for one form of cigarette being replaced by another.

Cigarette smoking among teenagers has fallen dramatically in recent years. In New York City in 2000, 27.1 per cent of high-school pupils were smokers; in 2016 it was 4.3 per cent.

However, 27 per cent of high-school students now use e-cigarettes, and last year 37 per cent of pupils in their final year used them, according to the state government. “It’s getting worse,” a high school teacher who declined to give her name said. “There have been kids caught in the bathrooms. They have been dealt with, but it’s very prevalent.”

Jahwone Lazare, a pupil in the seventh grade, said that vaping had become extremely popular among his classmates aged 12 and 13. He told CBS New York: “Everybody tries it and then they get addicted so they won’t stop.”

The Times