HEALTH SPECIALIST OFFERS ADVICE ON QUITTING VAPING.
I think, again the level of addiction that we're seeing is really unprecedented. And, you know the in terms of the trajectory of use it from initiation to dependance and for example, I had a student I was working with a few months ago who had started vaping just four month previously.
He was a first year and was already getting as much nicotine as someone who smoked a pack a day of combustible cigarets when you start using nicotine products under the age of 26.
Nicotine actually rewires your brain to predispose you to addiction for the rest of your life to nicotine I think that news has ht people pretty hard.
And I'm seeing a couple of different responses from your adults one is to see help in quitting which is fantastic. And we are excited to be able to support folks on that journey.
The other is young adults deciding that's well, these e cigarettes are too dangerous so I'm going to go back to smoking combustible cigarets which is incredibly unfortunate.
And so treating nicotine addiction is treating nicotine addiction well, regardless of the from. And will you know, in the next five or ten years we'll know more about sort of the nuances there.
But there are a real pretty clear path and how to treat nicotine addiction kin of generally speaking the addiction to nicotine, which can be treated by replacing the missing nicotine with nicotine replacement therapy, like the patch or the lozenge or the gum.
The best practice is to use more than one. So using both the patch and the gum, for example a big part quitting any kind of tobacco product, nicotine containing product, is addressing the way the function that product is playing in your life and creating an environment that's supportive of the quitting journey.
It is hard. It's work. And it might be uncomfortable, but it's worth doing. And so it just because it's hard that there is support to out there for people who want to quit and you will be more successful in quitting if you take advantage of the support that's available to you.
When I see these young adults come into my office sort of desperate to quit using whatever products they've been using, really reminded of myself and my friends when I was at their age, I began smoking combustible cigarets and in nineties, at the age of 12 and was immensely addicted.
And, you know I think about sort of tobacco control and public health and all of the work that we've done over many, many years to try to prevent young people from starting to smoke cigarets so they don't have to go through this painful withdrawal, quitting process.
And a lot of that has now been undone.
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