Keiki falling prey to e-cigs
Keiki falling prey to e-cigs
Sadly, we are losing ground in the fight to protect our keiki from a potential lifetime addiction to tobacco. The latest Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey data released this month shows a 5% increase in current e-cigarette use among high school students in Hawai’i. State lawmakers had a chance to pass legislation to halt the sale of flavored tobacco products this year but unfortunately chose not to take action.
I’m a volunteer with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and I’m concerned about the rising rates of e-cigarette use among our keiki. E-cigarette use among our youth is some of the highest in the nation, and more so in rural communities like Kaua’i. Popular flavors such as “Maui mango” and “Mystic menthol” are driving the use of these tobacco products that easily trap kids into addiction. Some health detriments of using e-cigarettes include respiratory issues like bronchiolitis obliterans or popcorn lung.
We need to address the youth e-cigarette epidemic here on our island. Please contact our local lawmakers and tell them we must STOP the sale of all flavors in all tobacco products, including menthol. They may have lost the chance this year, but let’s not waste an opportunity to protect our keiki next session!
Uri Martos, State Lead Ambassador – American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Lihue
Uri thank you for standing up to this horrible issue. E-cigs in the long run, or accumulation really, is destruction to the lungs. Turn your lung alveola into popcorn that’s a sick novelty joke on ignorant kids, worse if not equally destructive as lung cancer.
Our youth better know that Alveola are the little microscopic sacks in the lungs that miraculously exchange the toxic excretion of CO2 for life giving Oxygen, damage or “popcorn” those little miracle gas exchangers, exchanging bad CO2 for good Oxygen, and you suffocate to death over time and it will be called a pre-existing condition, and you’ll need to get on prescription drugs as well.
As the gas lung’s gas exchangers are destroyed by this “popcorn” damage, you will get less oxygen into the body and build up of toxic CO2 left in your blood stream.
Reduced oxygen for any reason to your lungs, results in less oxygen in your blood, means less oxygen to your vital organs and other body parts, when organs and other body tissues have less oxygen they undergo internal accelerated degeneration, a form of aging but also it is the process of accumulated diseases that become end of life diseases, and then you will have to take end of life prescription drugs, usually for decades until you reach the end of life.
A shame to waste a life like that.
if you want Mango flavor, eat a mango.
And did you know that those synthetic flavors, like mango, are made from petrochemicals that come from oil wells and coal tar from coal mines and as you know oil is meant for your car’s engine, not your lungs.
Don’t be a fool for e-Cigs, be proud of being smart.
Shame on our government allowing this instrument of death being sold to our youth. Make it like Meth…illegal…!