Teens these days! They love sleeping over at Ikea, scribbling on the pages of a Bible and heckling the tall Trump son and participating in countless other activities that make me grateful for their presence. What they also happen to be into these days is vaping.
A new survey of 17,000 middle school and high schoolers conducted by the CDC reports that more than one-third had tried e-cigarettes, the Verge reports. This, of course, is not ideal. It means that the the ads for e-cigs are working, promoting smoking and “promising independence and sex appeal to manipulate people into buying.”
The advertising tactics of Big Tobacco are insidous, indeed. But the report also confirmed what I had already suspected: one-third of the e-cig users are using their vape pens for something other than nicotine. The teens didn’t clarify what specifically they were using their vape pens for, but clearly, the answer is weed.
I’m sure there are some teens out there who are using their vape pens for nicotine liquid. But, I’m willing to bet that the majority of these teens are using their vape pens for weed, having figured out that if you want to keep it a secret from the folks, it’s way easier and more discreet than a joint. Just saying.
Take this news with a grain of salt, though. The Verge notes that the survey was self-reported by the teens themselves and “surveys based on self-reports are known to be unreliable.” So maybe they’re lying or maybe they’re really vaping more or maybe the teens surveyed for this particular study looked at the questions, hit the vape and then ran to 7-11 for Combos. We will never know.