Lung disease, heart disease, mental health and addiction are a mere few among the list of health risks that can be associated with an act that many of North Lincolnshire’s youth are actively taking part in. According to a study from 2023, one in five 15 year olds were vaping within England and an article from ITVX stated that “one in four shops” within Lincolnshire will sell vapes to underage children. How much further does this need to go before we act to save our future generation?

 

By 1956, studies were already linking smoking and cigarettes to cancer and death. It took us until 2007 to ban smoking within enclosed spaces. For 51 years we had sat back and allowed big tobacco companies to kill us off in the name of profit and revenue. Are we really about to do that again with our children and the children of those we know? How many times must we repeat the same mistake before we learn? The message that vaping is better than smoking has become dangerously distorted to the point where people believe it is not bad for you at all, just as Mikhail Varshavski says "We need to not write off vaping as a safe alternative to smoking. It's not safe". We need to urge our local councils and leadership into properly educating everyone on just how harmful vaping truly is. We have stooped so incredibly low to the mass marketing that is shovelled into us, that we now just accept that “disease in a box” can be wrapped in colourful packages and sold in different flavours, from strawberry to bubble-gum, just like ice cream for children! It is no wonder that children are so easily led to becoming shells of their former selves when vapes are essentially branded as a snack. The youth of Lincolnshire is suffering, whilst these corporations sit in towers abroad and count the money coming in from poisoning our streets. Let us not relax our restrictions on products that will harm children and instead plead for them to be tightened, with more control over their distribution so that they are not so easily given out to uneducated, young people on every street corner in Grimsby, to turn our own children into addicts. Which side of this disgraceful habits’ history do you want to be on?