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When Claire Collingwood goes to work next week, she will face a dilemma.
The 19-year-old, who has been working at Hazel Sky Smoke and Vape for two months, will still be able to sell e-cigarettes and vaping products to customers who enter the door. But she will not be allowed to buy them herself, at least not within the city of San Antonio.
"Obviously, I'm not going to do anything illegal," said Collingwood, who has been smoking for years. "I will understand it."
Collingwood will be part of a subgroup of young adults affected by the city's new "Tobacco 21" ordinance that comes into effect on Monday. The new rule, which takes the age of tobacco to 21, was approved by city council in January as part of a public health campaign aimed at protecting young people from highly addictive substances.
San Antonio will be the first city in Texas to adopt such restrictions on tobacco sales; Federal and state laws prohibit the sale or use of tobacco products by those under 18 years of age.
The new order comes as a result of strong pressure from the US Food and Drug Administration against electronic cigarette manufacturers, amid fears of an adolescent "vaping epidemic". On September 12, the agency gave the industry 60 days to show how it would keep its products out of reach of minors and threaten to ban or limit advertising and access to flavored electronic cigarettes. which have proved particularly attractive to teenagers.
Colleen Bridger, director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, described the overlap between the FDA's crackdown on e-cigarettes and the "happy coincidence" order and "a wonderful dual team between local government and federal government". the hope was to reduce the number of young people who smoke, 95% of them starting before age 21.
"When you have a chemical that changes the structure of the brain and you introduce it into a developing brain, you get a double whammy. You have a much more flexible brain and are much more sensitive to change, "said Bridger. "It's a lot more addictive when you start when you're young, it's a lot harder to quit, and it's much more likely that the brain will become addicted to other substances."
In the United States, smoking rates have been declining for years, largely because of public health campaigns warning of the risks of smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the smoking rate fell to 15.5% among adults in 2016, up from 37% in 1970. Nevertheless, smoking is responsible for 480,000 deaths per year.
But the rate of use of the e-cigarette has increased rapidly in recent years, with vaping becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. It has proven to be a particularly attractive trend among teens: more than 2 million college and high school students regularly used e-cigarettes in 2017, said the FDA commissioner earlier this month.
Since some vaping devices may look like flash drives and do not produce a lingering scent, they can be particularly easy to conceal and use by students. In the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years, the Northeast ISD reported 514 incidents on college and high school campuses in the district where students were surprised with electronic cigarettes.
Nicotine use among teens and young adults was down until two or three years ago, said Dr. Tamara Simpson, a specialist in lung care and intensive care at UT Health San Antonio.
"Now, with the advent of e-cigarettes and the use of e-cigarettes, nicotine use among teenagers and young adults has only increased," she said. "The main concern is that now this age group, which does not use nicotine so widely, is now using nicotine and is becoming much more dependent on nicotine."
Simpson, who treats patients with smoking-related lung disease, said experts generally agree that vaping is safer for the lungs "because it is not a combustible product ". put their health at risk, she says.
Unknown health risks
Despite the perception that vaping is healthier than smoking, health experts say that there is still much to be done about the long-term effects of e-cigarette use, compared to wealth research available on traditional cigarettes.
Timothy Grigsby, assistant professor of community health at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the relative novelty of e-cigarettes meant there was no research on how they could affect users in the long run .
It is also unclear, says Grigsby, that high nicotine levels that can be delivered easily by e-cigarettes can affect young people. For example, a clove of the popular Juul brand, which dominates the vaporization market, provides as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes, on about 200 "puffs".
"We do not know enough about all these e-cigs when we burn and inhale them into our bodies," said Grigsby.
It also remains to be seen if e-cigarettes can be effective substitutes or aids for people trying to get rid of their smoking habit. Simpson said she thought she could play a role as a potential stopgap for people already addicted to nicotine, but that her results were mixed.
Collingwood started smoking cigarettes at the age of 12. At age 14, when her addiction was at its lowest, she smoked a half-pack of two packets of Camel Crush each day.
At about 16 or 17, she spent a lot of time on vaping. The first week, she remembers the hacking of black phlegm as her body adapts to change. After a while, she said her lungs were starting to feel better. She could actually hold positions in yoga without losing her breath. She loved not smelling of smoke and smelled the smell of strawberry vanilla cake or blue raspberry instead.
In the past two months, she said she had only three cigarettes, a reduction that took her by surprise. Collingwood said she understood why public health officials were worried about the popularity of vaping among young people who had never smoked traditional cigarettes.
"It's really a shame that people start when they are not already addicted," said Collingwood. "Why give yourself a nicotine addiction? Why? This is absolutely nonsense. It always bothered me, because as a person who got hooked at age 12 because I thought it was cool to smoke a cigarette, now I have trouble doing it.
Clara White, a 20-year-old student at San Antonio College, said she did not feel that vaping was an effective substitute at 17, a year after she started smoking to cope with stress and stress. anxiety. Because she could use the device inside, she was constantly found to be vaping, probably absorbing more nicotine than she was smoking.
"My room was a cloud," she says.
She ended up saying that she had started smoking cigarettes again, which are more readily available at the nearest petrol station.
The law stops at the limits of the city
Tobacco sellers and smokers have reservations about the effectiveness of the San Antonio tobacco ordinance. Suburbs and surrounding municipalities within the city limits, such as Alamo Heights, will not be subject to the rule. Ways to escape the rule abound – Collingwood said it would likely shop at the Leon Valley chain.
"Honestly, I do not think she will do anything until they do it statewide," said Ethan Carpenter, 23, another Hazel Sky employee. "It's always easy to get around this law."
On Sunday, the last day before the entry into force of the age restriction, Carpenter said that Hazel Sky would remain open later than usual, while waiting for one. an influx of younger customers looking to stock up.
Bridger said the city hoped that the interest in adopting a statewide law to raise the age of tobacco purchases will improve when the Assembly resumes next year.
But the prescription could motivate young smokers who are trying to quit.
Nikki Page, a 19-year-old student at SAC who has been smoking for 15 years, said she had quit smoking about a month ago, in anticipation of the increased difficulty of getting cigarettes. She said it was "not worth it" to find ways around the rule and she was also looking to step down to improve her performance at CrossFit. Until now, she has not been tempted to take her back.
White, a friend of Page, said she did not know if her smoking habits would change as a result of this prescription. Her boyfriend, who is 25, could easily buy cigarettes for her, or she could always snatch them from her classmates. She said that it was unfair that the ordinance did not take into account the physical and emotional impact on those who had been smoking for years.
White said she was considering following the Page's example, using the prescription as an opportunity to improve her health.
"It's a good opportunity for me to resign, but that does not mean I'll necessarily do it. It's not a certain thing, "said White. "You have to leave for yourself. You can not leave for someone else. "
Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read it on our free website, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | [email protected] | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba
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