As vaping rates among South African teens surge, calls have gone out for the government to urgently enact the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, to curb what experts warn could become a full-blown national epidemic.
A UCT study showed that 17% of surveyed high school students currently vape, with 38% vaping daily and 88% using nicotine products that was easily made available using the Checkers Sixty60 app and others.
The Cape Argus spoke with two boys aged 12 and 15 years old, who revealed it was common even for children as young as ten years old to vape.
The 15 year old boy who is in Grade 10 said many of his peers vaped and often hid their vaping from teachers.
“Children do vape on the school grounds even during the interval and they do it when the teachers do not see.”
The 12 year old boy said children in primary school as young as 10 were vaping.
“A Grade 5 boy last year brought a vape to school, someone told the teacher and the people that knew about it got into trouble,” he said.
The Western Cape Health Department previously said that young people who vape are three times more likely to take up smoking, while the Western Cape Education Department also previously revealed there was a rise of vaping on school grounds.
Researchers at UCT are now calling for urgent government action, including the enactment of the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, to regulate vaping products and protect youth from nicotine addiction.
The bill seeks to regulate vaping products and shield South African youth from a growing nicotine addiction crisis, the university said.
The call comes following the landmark study, the largest of its kind in South Africa, conducted by researchers from UCT and Utrecht University in the Netherlands and recently published in The Lancet’s Clinical Medicine.
The university said the study surveyed 25 000 learners across 52 fee-paying high schools nationwide to assess the prevalence, drivers and addictive behaviours linked to vaping among teenagers.
The researchers uncovered startling trends using a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative data.
“This study filled a critical knowledge gap, and the findings paint a deeply concerning picture: • Nearly 17% of surveyed learners currently use vapes,” the university explained.
“Among them, 38.3% vape daily.
“Over 50% of current users vape more than four days per week.
“Alarmingly, 88% of current vapers reported using products containing nicotine.”
They added that researchers also investigated signs of addiction: 47% of teen vapers use their device within an hour of waking – a strong indicator of dependence; 11.8% said they cannot get through the school day without vaping; 24.9% admitted feeling anxious or angry if unable to vape for a prolonged period.
Samantha Filby of the Research Unit on the Economics of Exercisable Products at UCT’s School of Economics said: "What we need is regulation to ban ads targeting youth and enforce age limits to reduce appeal and access. Vape products are so easily accessible because you can even order them on the Checkers Sixty60 or UberEats mobile apps. The restrictions on vape marketing, which the bill provides, can aid in debunking the myth that vaping is safe and assist with deglamourising vaping among our youth.”
Cape Argus