WRAL Documentary: Gen V: Teen Vaping in North Carolina

I think vaping is one of the biggest issues our

generation needs to address

I see it every single day

It's honestly kind of terrifying how normalized

It's getting one in eight high school students is vaping

and approximately one in 20 middle school students is vaping

So are you addicted to vapes Yeah friends family everyone

You see it everywhere

I mean something that I've tried like at parties and

stuff nicotine's an addictive substance

It has all those other chemicals in it

They're getting our Children addicted

You have school administrators they're in a panic mode

It's an epidemic in the schools

They don't know what to do

A North Carolina High school is closing half its bathrooms

after disruptions caused by vaping

You ask counselors you ask the pediatricians or the family

doctors you ask the parents finally you ask the kids

and they'll tell you it's a problem

It's been noticeable since I was in sixth grade

It's starting to get younger and younger kids even before

the age of are trying vapes

Actually a lot of my friends start vaping in middle

school they would conceal them and then whenever we would

go outside for gym

That's when they would just start vaping and then kind

of like a circle huddled around them

Any high school anywhere across the state at any given

time you look in a classroom

Three of those students are vaping

I started when I was 16 and yes I still

do

I guess I started in eighth grade

I think it was 14

The discreteness of them as well allows them to be

used practically anywhere

I often see kids vaping in bathrooms and parks at

the back of the bus their own cars when they're

driving to school bathrooms I would Vape in the stalls

and stuff

I see a lot of the time at school during

passing period in between period dumb kids would do it

in class and they'd like hide under their shirt or

hoodies

Definitely when there's a substitute teacher cause you can just

shove it up like your hoodie sleeve or in your

pocket

It is so addicting people have no idea

Vaping in particular these products contain hundreds of chemicals

Then you couple that with the nicotine that we find

in these products and for adolescent minds nicotine is very

harmful

It it inhibits development

In many cases we're heating up this liquid we're inhaling

it that liquid then cools down and it coats the

lungs not allowing the lungs to do their job as

well as they could or should be doing

So it impacts respiratory health quite a bit

It's a common occurrence to have such terrible health issues

Vaping related lipid pneumonia popcorn lung and collapsed lung

How hard is it for young people to get vapes

Do you have a receipt I don't think it's difficult

at all because many shops don't ask kids for their

ID

I think it's so popular due to how Vape companies

market they specifically set out for teenagers because they use

enticing colors and enticing flavors flavors maybe like fruits or

candy and different flavors like pina colada or blue raspberries

like berry and grape cherry banana grape

However it's more widespread than it ever was simply because

of the quantity that's being produced

Earlier this afternoon lawmakers made an unexpected move to create

new regulations around vaping

There is new legislation in North Carolina a bill on

the way to the governor's desk tonight would ban the

sale of any vaping products that are not already approved

by the FDA

What do you think about that I think this is

really important to sort of clear the air on on

this issue

No pun intended

So this bill you have to have FDA authorization to

sell your products here right All of those products are

owned by big tobacco that so isn't this just helping

big tobacco I don't know if I can answer that

question

Talk about these companies

Are they marketing to kids Hell yeah all day long

The bottom line is that these Vape companies are concerned

with making money they could care less if they kill

your kid along the way

My name is Charlene Zorn

And I'm gonna be talking about my stepson Solomon

She idolized his father and his brother

They were his whole world played football

He liked playing he just you know liked to get

out on the field and be aggressive and he was

a typical boy

We were talking about the other day when he was

little he had these little football gloves that we were

outside and he had the ball

He always had to have these gloves on

It just is who he was

Solomon was 15 when he got what his doctor thought

was bronchitis no matter how much medication they gave him

and heavy breathing treatments and heavy steroids and inhalers

He wasn't getting better

He was a healthy active football player

I mean he couldn't walk to the bus stop he

couldn't walk from the house to the bus stop because

it was too much

Finally it's like time to see the pulmonologist and she

immediately knew she immediately knew it was from vaping and

she asked him and he admitted it

His family had no idea he'd been vaping for more

than a year or just how bad his health was

about to get

He got sick in April of 2023 on June 16th

He collapsed

His dad got home from work and found him passed

out and had talked to him on the phone 1520

minutes before that it took um about 77 minutes between

his dad trying to resuscitate him and the paramedics to

get him stable enough to transport him to the hospital

He just had a too much lack of oxygen

The hardest thing in the world is to watch your

child on a ventilator and to know there's nothing you

can do and to know that it was 100% preventable

His family had to make the agonizing decision to take

him off life support

She died from vaping

The vaping caused popcorn lungs which basically destroys your lungs

It breaks the lighting of your lungs down

It takes your ability to breathe away

He's got congestive heart failure

So his lungs his heart everything was filling up with

fluid and he basically drowned in his own fluid

But tell me about the funeral and and what you

said to his teammates we didn't even know that the

football team was gonna come and they all showed up

in their jerseys

And when I walked into the church and saw 40

or 50 high school age boys sitting there knowing that

my child was not one of them

It broke me it broke me like nothing ever has

After the funeral

When they were leaving we spoke to every child every

one of those kids and begged them

Please don't be

And that's what she does now tells his story in

this sincere hope

It stops even one kid from ever trying it looking

back are there signs you think you guys missed I'm

sure there are

I don't know how they weren't

Where do you think he was getting the vapes his

friends He said he told us he got them from

his friends

Nobody should feel like my family does ever

You must be 21 under federal law to buy tobacco

products in North Carolina

State law is still 18 and up and it's hard

because there's a damn Vape shop on every corner in

every town

And even though the law says they can't sell vapes

to miners they sure do

But don't card

I can tell you that much as someone in tobacco

prevention

I mean how easy is it for a teen to

get vapes It's fairly easy that plays out in the

numbers that we see

One in eight high school students Vape in North Carolina

start please with my name is it's not just the

numbers

You're gonna look right into the camera

It's what we heard from every young person

We interviewed that kids who want to Vape

Can we talk to young people in anti tobacco groups

And I've seen it firsthand where once it starts with

someone else then it spreads to another one and the

whole friend group starts vaping

So actually my football teammates we were using vapes before

and after practice we interviewed a teen in treatment for

vaping

I couldn't go to sleep without it and talk to

young people we met on the street

It's just kind of like everyone does it

They all said vapes are easy to come by no

matter how old you are

And kids also get them from their friends and where

their friends get

It is Vape stores

I always paid like someone in my grade to go

get them for me

Like just about anybody could get access to vaping

I mean there's so many Vape stores

How how is this gonna work So we checked stores

ourselves

How are high schoolers even able to have these devices

in the first place So I'm gonna put this on

you

This is a camera and we just want to see

if you get carded

Maybe the fact that they can walk across the street

and purchase a Vape

Did they card you No maybe that's the good reason

why next

Ok

What else What are we missing A big thing that

we're missing here is how we got to this point

It's really crazy and it started with Jewel

I was one of these folks who saw the trend

lines of how much high schoolers were stopping smoking

Uh And then all of a sudden some mad scientist

in California came up with a new way to deliver

nicotine

Jew was one of the first companies to produce synthetic

nicotine in a way that wasn't cost prohibitive nicotine in

and of itself is very stringent tastes pretty nasty

But with Jewel they were able to manipulate that ph

level to lower it

So it didn't taste as bad so people could get

deeper inhales

Take in more

That is a recipe for addiction

We have a generation of youth who are now addicted

to his cigarettes

We had worked for decades in North Carolina to prevent

this and recognize that really one company was going after

kids

North Carolina Attorney General's office commenced an investigation into Jewel

And what they did was they used flavors to attract

kids

They used very high concentration of nicotine to get kids

addicted quicker because their mind was if we can get

them addicted they're a customer for life and then they

marketed every shop on day one

You guys don't have like else bars or anything

Thank you

Have a good day

All right

Well thank you so much

Did any one say Oh you don't have your ID

You can't get this

No

The next day we hit six more stores including a

drive through

No questions were ever asked about ID or age

Thank you so much

Just two out of the 12 total shops said she

needed an ID to buy a Vape and you have

all these products you don't even Vape

No I've never vaped a day in my life and

I don't plan on it

I think it's a pretty big problem

State representative for Southern Wake County Erin per sponsored House

Bill 900 known as the vaping registry bill

Governor Cooper signed it into law

So House Bill 900 would create a registry under the

Department of Revenue

So everybody can see all of the products that have

been approved through an FDA federal certification process that would

remove a lot of illegal product

That is right now on the shelves in North Carolina

China produces over 90% of the world's vaping devices

The country has banned flavors in their country but still

makes and ships flavored vapes to the US

One reason Senator Paul Lowe from Winston Salem supports the

bill and they say in the country they make it

in it is not to be sold to our people

Well maybe we shouldn't sell it to ours either

Tobacco prevention advocates say under the new law a lot

of foreign Vape products would no longer be allowed to

be sold in North Carolina

It makes it anybody who has not applied for pre

market authorization

Those products are not going to be allowed for sale

So those are a lot of the products that are

coming from outside of the United States

But advocates say there is a big loophole in this

law companies who have applied for pre market authorization and

are waiting on an answer can still sell here

And how many is that Are we talking thousands hundreds

of thousands in terms of keeping these products off the

shelf I'm not sure the way the legislation is currently

written it's going to be able to do that

Companies denied FDA authorization who have appealed the decision can

also still sell Vape products under the new law

Something pere said was added as a provision when the

bill went through the Senate side

And so those products even through that appeal or litigation

would still be able to sell their product while that's

ongoing

And so that's the loophole that you're talking about

It's just comes down to a policy call on both

accounts and it seems like a pretty big loophole

You're gonna have these companies that you're talking about still

being able to to sell

I don't think that this bill is perfect

I think it is a big step in the right

direction

Groups like the American Lung Association say this bill benefits

one industry greatly big tobacco

Several of the big tobacco companies produce Vape and E

cigarette products

This is about market share for them because they are

the big conglomerates in this industry and not about protecting

youth from getting addicted

There are just 34 Vape or e cigarette products out

there authorized by the FDA

26 of those products are owned by two big tobacco

companies and Joy owned by Altria former Le Philip Morris

and Reynolds America in Winston Salem

Senator Lowe represents Winston Salem

You have to have FDA authorization to sell your products

here right All of those products are owned by big

tobacco

So isn't this just helping big tobacco I don't know

if I can answer that question

Um I haven't researched every company that has a product

or every company that's on that list

The list isn't that long Just 34 products owned by

three companies two of which are big tobacco

So this bill essentially would eliminate you know their competition

What do you say to that I think that that

that is true to an extent

Does it eliminate a lot of legal product That isn't

big tobacco Yes but they're illegal

But because of the loophole thousands of companies waiting for

authorization or fighting an existing order are allowed to sell

here as well

I'm worried that it's not going to have the impact

that folks think in terms of access there is something

many advocates say would have an impact raising the age

to buy tobacco products in North Carolina to 21

North Carolina is one of the last states to still

be 18

More than 90% of everyone who's addicted became addicted in

their teenage years

If we can delay people ever using until they're 21

the likelihood of addiction is very very low

You shouldn't be able to buy these drugs until you're

21

But neither lawmaker had a clear stance

Why not in this bill when you're addressing some of

these issues why not raise that age to 21 There's

a feeling that if your son or daughter is 18

years old and is able to serve in the armed

forces and put their life on the line that they

should be able to have the ability to go and

buy a tobacco product if they want to in North

Carolina

Some others might say if the federal level is 21

then it's incumbent on the state to then conform to

that and raise that age to 21

What do you think Well I guess I haven't come

to a conclusion on that yet

Why not change the age Um I think that's a

good question

I don't know if I have an answer for it

but I think that's a good question

I think that a person ought to have to be

an adult

Now that's what I believe personally

Um right now is not quite like that

But do you think 18 or 21 Wow

I think we ought to have the discussion and we

haven't really had the discussion and I'm not sure where

that'll go if we do

But I am surprised that you or the other lawmakers

I I've interviewed aren't willing to take more of a

stand and say no it shouldn't be 18

Federal is 21

And I think there's other gray areas in North Carolina

You know

So there's probably a lot of you know it doesn't

surprise me because North Carolina has a long history of

a strong tobacco lobby and you know it's unfortunate that

we you know have not raised the age

I'd be taking multiple breaks during class to go and

hit it

What the parents would tell us is ok

Our kid is clearly addicted from what you've said

What do we do But there wasn't anything for kids

Next

North Carolina was the first state in the country to

take Jewel to court

We won $48 million and we're using those funds to

help kids who are addicted

Millions of dollars are going to text based programs

Quit lines and research

The UN C School of Medicine received more than $880,000

to study vaping among young people

Well we have a vaping cessation program for adults but

there wasn't anything for kids

Now UN C has a program to help kids quit

My name is Oak Avery and I am 16 years

old Oak started vaping at 14

I would be hitting it multiple times a day

I'd be taking multiple breaks during class to go and

hit it

Her mom caught her once but she kept doing it

Then she got caught in school

It truly felt like walls were like crumbling down on

to me

Like I think it was 100% my mom who was

doing research into addiction therapy when she found that UN

C had a program and found Charlie

My name is Charles Sap and I'm a licensed clinical

social worker and a licensed clinical addiction specialist

Charlie worked with Oak on why she was vaping

They figured out strategies to overcome cravings

We tailor it to the person

We don't force anything on anyone

I'm very glad that I was able to quit and

had the help and support that I have

Now they want those one in eight high schoolers vaping

to know help is out there

So it definitely is known among the parental community

I think that what they struggle with just as much

as the kids struggle is finding the resources to help

their kids

I mean there's nobody in the world that want to

go through what we've been through

There's nobody in the world that wants to attend a

funeral for their own 15 year old child a week

and a half after his 15th birthday

Your hope is that we crack down every babe company

that we enforce the laws

They can't have flavor babes that they can't look like

toys that we convince Children

There's no need to start