Jersey specialist: ‘Vapes should not be used by non-smokers or children’

Dr Rhona Reardon, lead stop smoking nurse specialist and coordinator of Help to Quit Picture: ROB CURRIE. (39245424)

SMOKING is the “most harmful thing that you can do to your body”, a specialist nurse has warned.

Rhona Reardon, the lead clinical nurse for Jersey’s Stop Smoking service, also stressed that children and non-smokers should not use vapes “as nicotine is addictive” and that vaping levels “must be monitored” by the government.

Ms Reardon was speaking to the JEP at the conclusion of “Stoptober”, when the Stop Smoking Service aims to raise awareness of the benefits of quitting smoking.

Her comments also come as the government this week announced plans to ban single-use vapes.

Infrastructure Minister Andy Jehan lodged a proposition, due to be debated by the States Assembly in December, to extend the Island’s existing legislation around single-use plastics to include such vapes. If approved, the ban could be in place by the middle of 2025.

Public Health statistics released as part of the proposal revealed that 96% of local children and young people who vape opt for single-use vapes.

While the Stop Smoking Service is not designed for those who vape, Ms Reardon said “we mustn’t assume” that vaping habits will not cause an increase in smoking levels among young people due to higher nicotine content.

“Some studies in the UK have not necessarily shown a gateway effect from vaping to smoking,” she said. “If that were the case we would start to see more young people take up smoking. However, that must be monitored and we mustn’t assume that will always be the case so it’s really important that we continue to monitor rates in young people.”

She added that those using the Stop Smoking Service have been as young as 12.

According to Statistics Jersey’s latest Children and Young People’s Survey in 2021, the proportion of Year 12 students who had tried e-cigarettes had risen to 58% from 42% in the previous survey in 2018.

Of those young people, the survey found that females were more than twice as likely to describe themselves as regularly smoking e-cigarettes – at 11% – than males at 5%.

Ms Reardon said: “Smoking is the most harmful thing that you can do to your body whereas there is a good body of evidence showing that e-cigarettes or vapes pose a small fraction of the risks.

“They’re not risk free,” she added. “[Vapes] shouldn’t be used by non-smokers and certainly we wouldn’t want children using them as nicotine is addictive but from a smoking perspective vaping can help people.

“It is our priority to get people to stop smoking tobacco.”

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