{"id":53776,"date":"2020-02-02T13:33:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T20:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=53776"},"modified":"2020-02-03T10:06:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T17:06:27","slug":"student-smokers-wary-of-e-cigarette-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2020\/02\/02\/student-smokers-wary-of-e-cigarette-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Student smokers wary of E-cigarette alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Cloud Creation:<\/strong> Deklin Barber, left, and Ben Stevens take a break from class to vape on SAIT campus in Calgary on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. Barber and Stevens were both in their first year of New Media Production and Design. (Photo by Chelsey Harms\/The Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

[dropcap]C[\/dropcap]algary’s post-secondary students remain unconvinced that vaping is a safer alternative to smoking.<\/p>\n

Vaping has grown in popularity among some young people over the last few years with the rise of companies like Juul, Logic, and Vype.<\/p>\n

But an unofficial survey conducted by The Press, which polled 25 student smokers at random, showed that 64 per cent of them say they would never try vaping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe it\u2019s any better for you,\u201d said Buzz Van Steinburg, who studies power engineering technology at SAIT.<\/p>\n

Van Steinburg said he has heard people have gotten sick from vaping, and is uncomfortable with the potential side effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least when I smoke I know I\u2019ve got 50 years, I don\u2019t really feel like being a guinea pig,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More than a third of the students surveyed said they would not try vaping for health-related reasons.<\/p>\n

They were also concerned with the lack of information available on e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n

A few of the participants who said they wouldn\u2019t swap smoke for vapour had actually tried vaping but said it made them cough more often.<\/p>\n

Braden Qiu, a student in the education faculty at the U of C, said he would wake up with coughing fits in the morning after he switched to a Vype e-cigarette.<\/p>\n

Qiu would wake up with phlegm in his throat and lungs, which led to him throw up a few times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave up on it pretty quick after that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to the Government of Canada\u2019s website<\/a>, there have been 16 cases of vaping-associated illnesses reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada, as of Jan. 14. One of those cases was in Alberta.<\/p>\n

No deaths linked to vaping have been reported in Canada.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the people who said they wouldn\u2019t switch to vaping said that it didn\u2019t look nice aesthetically.<\/p>\n

The people who listed the \u2018look\u2019 of smoking as the main reason they wouldn\u2019t switch made up 50 per cent of the smokers questioned.<\/p>\n

Maddie Fisher, who is in Indigenous studies at the U of C, said that smoking looks more normalized, mature, and inconspicuous than vaping.<\/p>\n

\u201cCigarettes look classy,\u201d said Fisher, who mostly smokes on the weekends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might be because I\u2019m in love with the show Mad Men<\/em> where they smoke all the time, but honestly it\u2019s not like you would have ever caught James Dean smoking a vape,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

My nicotine addiction is honestly higher now than it was before. – Levi Madge<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Levi Madge, a SAIT student in automotive service technologies, said vaping helped him quit cigarettes, and he\u2019s grateful for it.<\/p>\n

Madge said he wanted to quit smoking for a while, so once Juul became a “normal thing” he bought one and hasn’t looked back.<\/p>\n

He said even though he\u2019s happy he\u2019s not smoking anymore, his concern has now shifted to his vaping habit.<\/p>\n

Madge said the ability to vape inside without any consequences has allowed him to do it more often.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy nicotine addiction is honestly higher now than it was before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Vaping related illnesses have been much more prevalent in the U.S., with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting 2,668 hospitalized cases and 60 deaths as of Jan. 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over a third of the students who said they would not try vaping, said they refused to make the switch for health-related reasons. They are concerned with the lack of information available on E-cigarettes. A few of the participants who said they wouldn\u2019t swap smoke for vapour had actually tried vaping previously, but said vaping made them cough with more frequency. [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":586,"featured_media":54147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1065,1106,2,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-53776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mount-royal-university","8":"category-physical-health-and-wellness","9":"category-campus-2","10":"category-u-of-calgary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/586"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53776"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54152,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53776\/revisions\/54152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}