Photo courtesy of Ruslan Alekso/Pexels
America is dealing with the worst public social health crisis she has ever seen, and I’m not talking about COVID-19. I’m talking about addiction.
Parents need to “weed between the lines.” The CDC, NIH, FDA and many non-government organizations are all reporting their survey numbers on adolescent vaping—but none of them are accurate!
Steered Straight conducted 10,000 vaping surveys of middle and high school students in nine states in February 2020.
Self-reporting has always been a poor method of getting the truth, but with kids, it’s far worse when it comes to accuracy. Academics like to tell you that their surveys are accurate, but all of these organizations and companies share the same deficiency while hiding the same truth. They all get paid to survey kids, yet most of their surveys aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Kids don’t answer truthfully to people they don’t trust, and if they don’t know them, they don’t trust them, especially on an issue they’re trying to hide. Kids aren’t telling the truth on most surveys about substance use because they don’t answer honestly if they think they’ll get in trouble.
With Steered Straight, after we present to them in their schools, they trust us. They know we care. They want to answer honestly. Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. We show them that we do.
In our February 2020 surveys we found that the percentage of students that self-reported vaping use was significantly higher than what any of the other surveys reported. It was nearly 30 percent higher!
Steered Straight just finished surveying 10,000 middle and high school students digitally this fall. We surveyed the same states and school districts, and more than 80 percent of the students who participated in our original survey participated again. Given the isolation caused by COVID, the increased accessibility of vaping products through the mail, and the stress and anxiety kids are expressing because of lockdowns and virtual learning, we assumed the numbers would be higher, but our team was even shocked at how much it has increased. More than double the amount of students reported current vaping use when compared to what is being reported by the federal government and the grantees it funds. It had jumped significantly even in our research, and it’s a troubling trend that many parents don’t understand.
We surveyed more than 3,500 sixth, seventh and eighth graders about vaping and found their current use to be 46 percent.
We surveyed more than 6,500 ninth through twelfth graders to find their current use is 74 percent.
Here’s what I am scared of—this is going to get much worse!
We have been presenting on this youth trend to students, staff and parents in every state in the country. For three years, I’ve been screaming to people about how kids are vaping and how bad it is. Very few people were listening. Governors issued executive orders and spent millions of dollars on campaigns to fight it, every major news media in America reported on it before COVID, some even calling it a crisis, hospitalizations were climbing just as I had predicted, young people were even dying from it, and yet here we are almost a year removed from many kids being in schools, and I can’t find a single mainstream story on it. But ironically, respiratory disease is the number-one underlying complication for COVID illness and death. I’m actually scared, because people still think the problem is limited to 37 percent of kids vaping. Our surveys in nine states show that kids self-reported that 46 percent of middle schoolers and 74 percent of high schoolers say they currently use. Where’s the discussion? Where’s the concern?
The massive shifts to ordering products in the mail is increasing the ease of kids getting vapes and vape products. The presence of the black market is rising exponentially, and vaping products will be getting more poisonous for youth than ever as their use increases, addiction develops and health consequences manifest themselves. The use of marijuana concentrates in vapes and vape products is growing tenfold and the market is exploding, because kids are the market. They are convinced it’s harmless as more and more states minimize the dangers on the health of Americans with absolutely no clarification on youth and the developing adolescent brain.
Families have nicotine-addicted kids, and no one is telling these parents what to do. There are going to be so many pulmonary cases over the next three years that respiratory disorders will eventually jump over cancer as the No. 2 cause of death in America.
No one will be holding the THC market accountable. It’s exploding right now to fill the market for flavors. Many of the manufacturers operate under legal marijuana laws in legal states without any oversight and without any accountability. They are shipping tens of thousands of flavored “pods” containing high concentrations of THC across state lines, violating federal law, and they’re not being held responsible. They sell on their websites and ship nationally, to anyone and everyone, including kids. They’re selling apparel to kids so kids can hide their vape smoke in hoodies. They’re marketing how-to videos to make your own flavors with do-it-yourself pods.
It’s the far more damaging, far longer-lasting pandemic within the pandemic. The youth and young adult population has always been disproportionally touched by addiction because of risky adolescent behavior and seeking escape from trauma through substance use. Compounding this for more than a decade has been so many youth and young adults directly affected by a pharmaceutical-induced opiate explosion. Coupled with the widespread legalization of marijuana, we find ourselves in what is being called by many as a pandemic but not widely accepted as such by society. This is one of the biggest hindrances to our young population. In fact, I personally submit that it is the greatest threat to student success.
Education is one of the most important protective factors needed to prevent addiction and the most foundational component in recovery from addiction. Every student and parent needs to be aware of the dangers of these products for the adolescent. Our success as a country is only a success if it’s with our youth. Parents and guardians must lead the way, and we have written an in-depth guide and tool to do just that. Our guide and website can truly give you much of the vital information to learn more about this issue.
The book Table Talks and Dashboard Conversations gives parents a year of conversations that they can have with their middle and high school students on a daily basis. There are more than 365 conversations to choose from. And we published it into an easy-to-use journaling guide, with 12 months of themes and conversations for every day of the year.
