Address SA’s adolescent vaping catastrophe
As the vaping crisis intensifies among teens in South Africa, public health researchers at the University of Cape Town (UCT) have urged government to urgently implement the Tobacco Products & Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill to avoid a national vaping epidemic.
The bill aims to bring vaping products into the regulatory net and protect the youth from a potential nicotine catastrophe. According to a research paper – co-authored by a team of multidisciplinary researchers at UCT and Utrecht University in the Netherlands and published in The Lancet’s eClinical Medicine – the vaping tally among young South Africans is alarmingly high.
The study, which is said to be the largest of its kind in South Africa, surveyed 25 000 pupils at 52 different fee-paying high schools around the country. It aimed to investigate just how common vape use is among teenagers, the factors that are driving it, and the extent of young people’s addiction. Researchers used a mixed-method research approach – combining both quantitative and qualitative data to understand the vaping behaviour among the sampled teens.