06 June 2023 , 12:14
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Young kids are being hospitalised by vaping as calls grow to ban e-cigarettes.
A paediatric respiratory consultant issued the shocking warning today as they revealed how children are being admitted to hospital because of vapes.
Dr McKean, a doctor at the Great North Children’s Hospital in Newcastle, said they were seeing a rising number of children developing dangerous lung conditions related to vaping.
The vice president for policy at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Children Health (RCPCH) also called for a ban on disposable e-cigarettes as the organisation warned that “youth vaping is fast becoming an epidemic”.
Vapes contain high doses of nicotine and are said to be “addicting children”.
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The devices are known to cause respiratory problems like shortness of breath, lung inflammation, chest pain and even, in severe cases, respiratory failure.
One children's doctor warned that the country could be 'sleepwalking into a crisis' over children vaping (Getty Images)Dr McKean told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: “We are now seeing children who are presenting to hospital and to clinics who have got breathing problems related to vaping, we believe.
“We know that disposable vapes are the main vapes children are using. We've seen a disturbing rise in the number of children and young people vaping.”
He added that because e-cigarettes haven’t been available on shelves for a long time, it makes studying the impacts “very difficult”.
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Although widely believed to be safer than smoking, the long-term effects of vaping still aren’t known for this reason.
Dr McKean added: “It's fair to say we're not seeing large numbers of children with severe lung disease but it's certainly been reported now where people have developed lung disease related to vaping.
“Vaping was first designed to enable people who were addicted to cigarette smoking to come off cigarette smoking and there's no doubt that if you buy legally carefully produced vapes that it's likely to be a lot less harmful than cigarette smoking.”
Experimental use of e-cigarettes is up 50 per cent amongst 11-17 years olds (TOLGA AKMEN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)Despite that, the doctor said there were concerns that vapes were leading to addiction in children “in an early stage of their development”.
The RCPCH is today pushing for the government to ban disposable e-cigarettes, citing “alarming” NHS data that shows one-in-five 15-year-olds used an e-cigarette in 2021.
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Further data from Action on Smoking (ASH) shows that experimental use of e-cigarettes is up 50 per cent among 11 to 17-year-olds on last year.
Dr McKean added: “Youth vaping is fast becoming an epidemic among children, and I fear that if action is not taken, we will find ourselves sleepwalking into a crisis.
“I have worked as a respiratory consultant for 21 years, so it is not lost on me that smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable illness and disease in the UK.
“Cigarettes are the one legal consumer product that if used as recommended by the manufacturer will kill most of their users.
“We know this because we have 60+ years of research and data on cigarette use on a population level.
“But the research and data around widespread e-cigarette use is still very much in its infancy. We simply don’t know enough.
“What we do know is that these products are not risk-free, are likely to be damaging for developing young lungs and are also terrible for our environment. This is a lose, lose situation.”
This comes as a shocking Mirror investigation revealed how vapes with as much nicotine as 100 cigarettes were being illegally sold to children.
The Mirror sent a secret shopper, aged just 13, into 16 retailers in Manchester and almost half sold her vapes despite it being illegal.
It’s against the law to sell vapes with nicotine to under-18s.