Vaping prevention and quit resources: top tips for parents and educators

Parents and educators have an important role to play in reaching students with the information they need to make informed choices, including providing tools to quit if they are already vaping. Truth Initiative teamed up with National PTA to publish “5 Things You Need to Know About Youth Vaping” in Our Children, the organization’s official magazine, to help provide the most important information about youth vaping and nicotine use right now.

It is a critical time to address youth nicotine use. According to recent data, more than 2.5 million middle and high school students reported current e-cigarette use in 2022 and almost half of high schoolers who vape do so on a near daily basis. The 2022 Monitoring the Future Survey (MTF) also found that vaping nicotine remains the most common type of substance use among 8th and 10th graders. As new tobacco products continue to appear on the market, it is also increasingly important that parents and educators familiarize themselves with new products that are gaining popularity, such as pouches, lozenges and synthetic nicotine products.

In addition to “5 Things You Need to Know About Youth Vaping,” here are some other resources for parents, educators, and others working with young people:

Nicotine use in schools:

• Going back to school may lead to more vaping – here’s what educators and communities can do about it
• Discipline is not the answer: Better approaches to on-campus student tobacco use
• What educators can do if they catch students vaping in schools
• Educators share how a free vaping prevention curriculum has helped their students

Nicotine and the young brain:

• Many young people turn to nicotine to deal with stress, anxiety and depression, but don’t know it may be making them feel worse
• Fact Sheet: Nicotine and the young brain
• Colliding Crises: Youth mental health and nicotine youth

Emerging tobacco products:

• Vaping Lingo Dictionary: A guide to popular terms and devices
• What is Zyn and what are oral nicotine pouches?
• What you need to know about new synthetic nicotine products
• Elf Bar, Hyde, and Breeze – what you need to know about the rise in disposable e-cigarettes

Free resources exist to help prevent youth e-cigarette use and help those already vaping quit. Vaping: Know the Truth, a curriculum from Truth Initiative and Kaiser Permanente in collaboration with the American Heart Association, gives young people facts about e-cigarette use. Developed as part of the truth^® campaign, the curriculum is a 40- to 45-minute self-administered digital course for middle and high school grade levels. The curriculum also introduces students who are already vaping to This is Quitting, a first-of-its-kind text message program that is helping more than 500,000 young people quit vaping.