Vaping has replaced smoking amongst South Cariboo teens.
These days it’s more common to see young people sneak a hit of their vape rather than light up a cigarette. It’s a trend that worries health professionals like Nicole Hargreaves and Jered Dennis, two of Interior Health’s Legal Substance Reduction coordinators.
“Really what we’ve seen in recent years is there has been an inverse relationship with smoking cigarettes, or commercial tobacco use, to vaping use. As cigarette use has been going down in communities, especially among youth, we’ve seen an uptick in vaping use among teens,” Hargreaves said.
Substance reduction co-ordinators are responsible for monitoring the use and abuse of legal substances such as alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes and vape products. They take a “population-level health approach” Hargreaves explained and support several programs across the region aimed at reducing cannabis, alcohol and nicotine use. Nicotine use especially has been on the rise in recent years thanks to vapes.
The 2018 BC Adolescent Health Survey found that 36 per cent of youth in the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap region had vaped within the last 30 days. While it’s just an educated guess, Dennis said it’s likely vape usage has increased since then. He noted that IH expects to have more up-to-date numbers within the next few weeks following the release of a new survey.
There are a variety of reasons why vapes have become the preferred substance among teens, Hargreaves explained. This includes how easy vapes are to conceal, peer pressure, the stress of everyday life and how normalized it’s been among teens in recent years.
One of the biggest factors, however, is the fact vaping has been perceived as less harmful than traditional tobacco products. Vape companies such as JUUL originally sold their product as a smoking cessation tool.
While vapes are better for smokers than cigarettes, they also became a way to hook a whole new generation on nicotine. Due to how relatively new vaping is, Dennis said doctors don’t truly know what potential health risks could emerge, especially among those who adopted the practice young. He did note however vapes can contain heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals.
“There is this misconception that vapor products just contain water and that’s absolutely not the case. We know that water vapour contains a variety of different toxic chemicals that are inhaled through the lungs and mouth and then absorbed into the bloodstream,” Hargreaves said. “When that happens the chemicals enter your brain and organs through the blood and can have a really significant impact on adolescent brain development.”
Hargreaves said these effects can manifest themselves as impulsiveness, difficulties learning and paying attention and dependency. Nicotine itself is highly addictive and youth are most susceptible to becoming addicted.
Dennis pointed out that the human brain and lungs aren’t fully developed until the mid-twenties. When you introduce foreign substances to them while they’re still developing they can have a far more detrimental effect than they would on an adult.
“I’m not saying (vaping is) harmless for an adult, but there’s a greater risk of harm for a young person because they’re still in that developmental stage,” Dennis said. “We don’t know what the long-term impacts of vaping are, so we’re trying to play catch up to identify the burdens on health.”
Vapes can only be sold if they contain nicotine or cannabis, with a limit of 20 milligrams of nicotine per one millimeter of vape juice. When sold at a vape shop or convenience store they can only be sold to adults over the age of 19.
Dennis said that typically youth report they obtain vapes via an adult whether they be a friend, an older sibling or even their parents. Online sales have also become a significant way for teens to acquire vapes. The Tobacco and Vapour Act regulates online sales and requires the company delivering the items to verify the purchaser’s age.
According to a test done by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Dennis said Canada Post is most effective at confirming customer’s ages. However, some of the other delivery services were not found to be as diligent.
One of the best ways to reduce youth vape use, Dennis said, would be to ban flavored vape products. Vape shops can still sell vapes flavoured like fruits and candies and he believes if they could only sell methanol or tobacco-flavoured products, like gas stations, use among youth would decline.
“Some of the common reasons why youth vape are flavours. Flavours are a significant appealing factor to youth vaping and I would suggest if the only flavours were tobacco flavour, we would reduce vaping rates,” Dennis said. “I firmly believe that. It’s an intervention or strategy that could be put in place that would significantly impact youth vaping rates.”
If you’re looking to help a teenager quit vaping, Dennis said you should initiate conversations with them about the habit. By talking to them about the risks associated with vaping from a place of education, not fear, you can delve into why they’re vaping and give them the support they need to quit. Hargreaves added that it doesn’t just take a one-off conversation, but instead an ongoing dialogue.
Dennis also recommends people looking to quit make use of the BC PharmaCare’s Smoking Cessation Program which provides everyone 12 weeks of free Nicorette patches and other smoking cessation tools. Youth can also download Quash, an app designed to help them reduce their use of vapes by allowing them to way the pros and cons of the habit.
“We often talk about quitting now, but even the reduction of the quantity and frequency of vaping products is a significant movement towards reducing the harm,” Dennis said. “Instead of hitting a vape five times in an hour, try to hit it once an hour. When you inhale the vape try not to inhale a huge amount of the aerosol.”
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
