Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - MINI: Vaping Is Creating Havoc In Schools Across Aotearoa

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

In news, Principals around Tāmaki Makaurau have warned that there is an increasing amount of peer pressure for younger students to start vaping - a habit that has become a significant problem in almost half of all central Auckland primary and intermediate schools. This morning Kelly Burrowes joined Jono and Ben to discuss her study on vaping and the unknown causes and consequences of it. Read more at The NZH website now >> https://bit.ly/3jr890RSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're talking about vaping because it seems to be all over the news right now and I guess no one really knows the long-term health effects. And kids as young as 10 years old are starting to vape at some schools, which seems shocking. Yeah, now research is just a research program just started at Auckland University. It's going to be a three-year program and Dr. Kelly Burrows is the vaping researcher from Auckland Bioengineering Institute. Welcome, how are you? Hi, thank you. Great to have you on. I feel like you should

be on RNZ or something more respected, but you've joined Jono and Ben on the hits. Oh, yeah, thank you. Great to be here. Career highlight. For us, it's a career lowlight for you. I'm going to a grade D celebrity status. Someone's told me, so maybe that's true. D's punching a bit above our weight, too. Yeah, I know. We can only dream of D celebrity status.

Kelly, anyway, you've done an in-depth study into vaping, and this week, a lot of news about it. 45% of intermediate and primary school leaders said vaping is a problem in intermediate and primary, which is wild. I know, it's awful. But is vaping bad for you? We've only just started our study. We're only about four months in, but there's not much doubt in my mind

that vaping will be bad for people. I think the question that's just remaining is how bad it's going to be. There's dangerous chemicals in there, the flavourings that are added, the heating process can create different chemicals, and there can even be metals coming off the vape device itself. And no one really knows what the long-term health effects of those chemicals are yet. No, well, I mean, when smoking kicked off its career, you know, you could smoke when you were pregnant to keep your weight down. There are ads advertising that. Yeah, I know.

There was wild stuff like that and I guess no one really knew the dangers of smoking or if they did, they weren't widely publicised. Yeah, exactly. I do feel like it's history repeating itself a bit

so I think it's definitely going to take another 10 or 20 years until we're like, oh, actually, they're pretty bad for you but time's going to be, you know,

the answer to that really. Well, they'll look back on that and go, gee, that was a crazy time in history. People were vaping in the office. They were vaping everywhere. Babies were vaping. I know, I know,

because they can say that there's even second and third hand vape. So with smoking, there's only second hand smoke, right? But with vaping, there's also third hand vaping, which is where you get the chemicals depositing on surfaces that can then be picked up. Oh, really? So there's obviously the argument that many people say that it's better for you than smoking. Do you agree if you're going to say that is the lesser of two evils in your opinion?

Yeah, that's what everyone's asking. So at this stage, I think what we know so far is we hope that it's safer than smoking, but again, not even that has been proven so that judgement's really based on the fact that there are less chemicals in e-cigarettes so in normal cigarettes it's been shown to be up to 7,000 different chemicals whereas

e-cigarettes maybe there's 1 to 200 different chemicals in there but again no one really knows how it's going to compare to smoking but at the moment I think you could say that it's thought that it's safer than smoking. You keep mentioning chemicals. What are we talking here if you were going to cherry pick a couple of the big ones? So, well, the main chemicals that are in the e-liquid are propylene glycol and glycerol.

But there's also a small amount of alcohol in most e-liquids. But then there's the flavouring chemicals. So I think on the market, someone measured that there's about 15,000 different flavours you can buy. And each of those flavours is made by adding a different flavouring chemical, basically. And it's similar stuff that goes into our food. So those chemicals are thought to be safe to eat,

but nobody knows how safe they are to breathe into your lungs. Do you find it interesting that there's obviously a lot of debate at the moment around the vaccine and there are some people hesitant about the vaccine because they don't know what's in it. But then I would imagine a lot of people, or most people probably vaping, don't really know what's in that either. Yeah, exactly. They won't know what's in it. There's no regulations that says you have to list what's in an e-liquid at the moment. So I think they just say that there's those propylene glycol, glycerol and nicotine, but they don't have to list any of the other chemicals that are in there.

They just go, and there's some other stuff. You don't need to worry about that. Would you, you're only four months into your study, obviously. Would you, if a friend came to you and said, I'm thinking of stopping smoking, should I vape? Yes. Well, I would say, I think it's a good idea to switch, but you should have a plan to stop vaping

as well. It should. And actually, to be honest, there's other ways to give up smoking. There's other methods, you know, using nicotine replacements, so patches or gum. I mean, my advice would probably be, if you've tried, you know, try some other ways first. If you really can't stop smoking using other ways, you know, give e-cigarettes a try,

but have a plan to get off them as well eventually. Yeah, Ben replaced his cigarette addiction with gambling addiction, which was great. No, no, no. I haven't done either of those things. A lot of parents will be listening right now, Dr. Burrows, and what would you say to them? How to curb their kids from vaping? Because I mean, teenagers and smoking has been going hand in hand, literally,

for decades. But then it was, as you said before, John, it was crazy to us to think that primary schools around New Zealand, there are some kids vaping. Yeah, it's horrible because I've got three young kids, primary school age kids, and the thought, you know, if they were to try vaping in a couple of years time is awful. I mean, that's a hard one with teenagers because I know, you know, yeah, of course teenagers

are going to try things. I mean maybe it's to be open with them, to try and share, educate children that they're not going to be safe and that it's not something they should really continue doing. How are they getting their hands on vapes? I have no idea, actually. But there was a TV One News piece, wasn't there,

where they put someone undercover who was underage. And so the dairies and convenience stores are still, you know, they're still selling them to underage kids because there's only a tiny fine. 18, I'm gathering, is the age, is it? Yeah, that's the age now. But I guess you can also buy them online. You know, you just have to click on the box saying you're over 18, I'm gathering, is the age, is it? Yeah, that's the age now. But I guess you can also buy them online. You know, you just have to click on the box

saying you're over 18, but there's no one that checks that. Yeah, right. Well, look, this has been a really interesting conversation with you. We'd love to catch up with you once you've completed your research. I don't know if we'll still be working here at the Hits Radio session. How many years? Three. It was three years on it. Yeah, no, it's three. But yeah, we can

touch base again as we find out more. Even if it's not on radio, we'll just be like, hey, how did that work out for you? We're no longer at the hits and stuff. Yeah, I'd like to see if the gambling's still going on as well. Yeah, we'll see how that's going. Ben's lost his wife, his kids. Hey, Dr Kelly, thank you so much for your time.

We really appreciate it. And thank you for what you're doing. It sounds like a really fascinating study and the results are going to be really, really interesting for New Zealand.