Addiction & Recovery 9.14.25 - Flipbook - Page 12
12 A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Sunday, September 14, 2025
Vaping: Gateway to Addiction?
Vaping is not only harmful itself but also can lead to other addictive behaviors
By Carol Sorgen, Contributing Writer
D
oes your youngster vape?
If so, they’re not alone.
According to a recent
survey by the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC), 1.63 million
(5.9%) students currently use e-cigarettes. This statistic includes 410,000
(3.5%) middle school students and
1.21 million (7.8%) high school students.
“While this rate is significant, the
good news is that the percentage
has somewhat decreased since 2023,
when it was approximately 7% of
students using,” says Nidhi Kotwal,
MBBS, medical director of the pediatric outpatient bronchoscopy program at the University of Maryland
Children’s Hospital and assistant
professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
For those unfamiliar with vaping,
Nemours Children’s Health (www.
kidshealth.org) explains that e-cigarettes (often called vape pens) are
battery-operated vaping devices that
heat a liquid until it becomes an
aerosol mist, which is inhaled. The
aerosol is not just water vapor, however, but usually contains nicotine,
other harmful chemicals, and flavorings. Even e-cigarettes that claim to
have no nicotine have been found to
contain some of the substance, often
along with marijuana, herbs or oils.
The popularity of vaping can, in
large part, be attributed to both advertising and social media. “Vaping is
considered ‘cool’,” says Kotwal, who
points to such phenomena as “vape
cloud” postings on social media.
“The bigger the cloud, the cooler it
is,” she says.
Vapes are also appealing to younger smokers for a number of other reasons, Kotwal observes. They’re small
and easy to carry around, easy to
conceal, colorful (“they look like Pez
candy dispensers”), and come in a variety of flavors, such as fruit, candy/
desserts/other sweets, mint and menthol. “Vaping can actually be more
addictive than cigarettes because the
flavors are more appealing than the
taste of cigarettes themselves,” says
Kotwal.
Kotwal adds that while the Food
and Drug Administration prohibits
retailers from marketing vapes and
similar addictive products to those
under 21, vapes can be purchased online (“anyone can just click on ‘yes’
when asked ‘are you 21 or older’”)
and storefront retailers aren’t necessarily looking at IDs.
“There are also laws designed to
prohibit having vape shops near
schools, but that’s hard to manage as
well,” Kotwal adds.
According to Kotwal, the defense
by those who vape who say that
e-cigarettes are less addictive and
harmful than smoking actual cigarettes just isn’t true. She explains that
the adolescent brain is still developing until about the age of 25, and
e-cigarettes, which studies show may
contain as much nicotine as a packet of cigarettes, can harm the brain
development in adolescents, worsening anxiety and depression, impacting learning, memory, and attention,
and increasing the risk for future
addiction by making users feel good
temporarily, which in turn results in
their smoking more and increasing
the risk for addiction to other drugs,
leading them to be known as “gateway” drugs.
Kotwal notes that it’s not just the
nicotine that can cause health issues,
but that the chemicals that convert
nicotine into aerosols can also cause
heart and lung issues such as asthma
