March 28, 2022. Reno/Sparks, Nev. – E-cigarette and vaping among middle school-aged kids in Washoe County has nearly tripled since 2017 as the Washoe County Health District and its District Board of Health recognize March as Vaping Prevention Month.
The Washoe County Health District is partnering with Parents Against Vaping (PAVe) to host three free parent education webinars in English/Spanish to help parents learn about the danger of e-cigarette/vaping products starting Wednesday, March 30 at 4 p.m. To register, go here: www.parentsagainstvaping.org/events.
The webinars will address the powerful addictiveness of e-cigarettes, how to talk to kids about vaping, signs to look for and quitting resources, among other topics.
In 2017, about 6.6% of youth in Washoe County tried e-cigarettes. In 2019, that figure climbed to 18.9 percent, which was 6.9 percent higher than the state of Nevada average. Locally and across the nation, there are unacceptable disparities in youth e-cigarette use by zip code, income level and ethnic group creating long-term inequities in health and behavioral health outcomes.
“The manufacturers of vaping products employ aggressive advertising campaigns targeted towards teenagers and young adults, which take advantage of the lack of specific regulations for their sale,” says Dr. Jose Cucalon Calderon, the American Academy of Pediatrics Nevada Chapter E-Cigarette Prevention Champion.
PAVe is a national grassroots organization founded in 2018 by three New York City moms — Dina Alessi, Meredith Berkman, and Dorian Fuhrman — as a response to the youth vaping epidemic. More information can be found on its website at www.parentsagainstvaping.org.
The catalyst for PAVe was their discovery in April 2018 that a JUUL representative had entered their sons’ high-school through an outside anti-addiction group, without the school’s knowledge. The representative told the 9th-grade students, without adults present, that JUUL was safe and would receive FDA approval “any day.” Congressional testimony about this incident was cited by FDA as evidence that JUUL had marketed directly to kids.
The Surgeon General and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have both urged aggressive steps to protect our children from e-cigarettes. These highly potent, accessible, and addicting products risk exposing new generations of young people to nicotine.
The Nevada Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians, the Nevada Tobacco Prevention Coalition, Parents Against Vaping, Boys and Girls Club of Truckee Meadows, and the Washoe County School District are rallying around the goal of protecting our youth from the nicotine addiction, physical harm, and behavioral health damage resulting from youth using e-cigarettes.
The Washoe County Health District hopes to deepen parent support from the Parents Against Vaping webinar series to strengthen public health and protect our children in Washoe County. The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services funding for local youth vaping prevention efforts is crucial to continue to build strong prevention efforts against e-cigarette and vaping use by youth.
The Washoe County Health District is nationally accredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board and has jurisdiction over all public health matters in Reno, Sparks, and Washoe County through the policy-making Washoe County District Board of Health. The District consists of five divisions: Administrative Health Services, Air Quality Management, Community and Clinical Health Services, Environmental Health Services and Epidemiology & Public Health Preparedness. More info can be found here.