'Vaping: Why Risk It?' New City Campaign Asks Teens

By Mae Rice in News on Dec 23, 2015 10:33PM

The Dangers of Vaping would be a good name for a band. (Especially a Christian rock band!) However, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CPDH) is not focusing on any of that in their latest campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the actual dangers of vaping.

The effort, which launched on social media this week according to an announcement from the city, especially targets teens. According to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, it’s just one facet of the city’s effort to curb teen smoking.

The health department defines vaping, clinically, as “breathing an aerosol of heated, liquid nicotine from battery-operated devices such as e-cigarettes, mods, personal vaporizers and other electronic nicotine delivery systems.” (This is a new-ish term; it was the Oxford Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” in 2014.)

On social media, campaign tweets so far focus on three key facts about vaping: it’s addictive; e-liquids can include toxic compounds; and vaping devices aren’t regulated by the feds, so no one really knows what they're made of.

Here are all the tweets so far, as seen on the Chicago Public Health Twitter account:

One final note: The announcement of this campaign includes an interesting note about youth smoking trends:

Though youth smoking in Chicago is at an all-time low, the campaign is dedicated to informing Chicagoans on the dangers of using e-cigarettes and other vapor products. Multiple studies show that use of e-cigarettes by teenagers is skyrocketing. In fact, the CDC's National Youth Tobacco Survey found that use of these highly-addictive products has tripled among middle and high school students from 2013 to 2014.

As comical as comedian Rob Delaney has made vaping sound, that's a semi-solid case for a trend. (It could also mean teen usage tripled from, say, two vaping teens to six.)