We now have more information about how e-cigarettes can affect adolescents. It is tragic, because kids had really gotten the message that cigarettes are bad for you, but candy-flavored e-cigarettes seem safer and lure them in. Kids who start with e-cigs are more likely to become smokers, use other addictive substances, have depression and attempt suicide. I recorded a Breathe Easy podcast for the American Thoracic Society on this topic with Dr. Laura E. Crotty Alexander, a lung doctor who studies e-cigarettes in the lab. Listen and learn about how e-cigarettes can affect youth in your community and what can be done to help them break free and ideally never get addicted in the first place.

What can you do?

Learn about how a comprehensive flavor ban may help your state or community with the episode Breaking States Free from Flavored Tobacco & Why it Matters. Post

If an adolescent in your life vapes, learn how to talk to them about it in an evidence-based way with the Do the Vape Talk- episode which includes expertise from the American Lung Association, Post
Finally, consider a donation to the American Thoracic Society, whose Tobacco Action Committee works hard to protect Americans from the tobacco industry and who recorded the Breathe Easy podcast that is the foundation of this episode.

Studies covered in pod

Golder S et al. Vaping and harm in young people: umbrella review Tobacco Control Aug 2025.

Bauer SE et al. Treatment of Nicotine Use in Adolescents Under 18 Years of Age: An Official American Thoracic Society Clinical Practice Guideline. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2025