NORTH HAVEN

Following an initial round of community outreach and education on the risks of nicotine use by North Haven teens, the town’s Local Prevention Council (LPC) is looking to expand its outreach to the community.

The LPC started its second year of involvement with North Haven by holding a Jan. 18 presentation at the Ulbrich Corporate Office focusing on the harm that teenagers face by using electronic cigarette products and how parents and educators can respond. The featured speaker was Tricia Dahl, a member of the Tobacco Research in Youth (TRY) team from Yale New Haven Hospital. Dahl informed North Haven residents and representatives of the North Haven LPC and Quinnipiack Valley Health District on the prevalence of vaping among teenagers, as well as intervention tactics to help reduce use.

Dahl showed attendees statistics that were collected as part of a survey in early 2023 by the Food and Drug Administration (FPA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The survey found that while the use of nicotine products, including highly popular and inexpensive flavored e-cigarette vapes, dropped among American high school students by 3.9 percent, there was a 2.1 percent increase in use by middle school-aged students.

“About 2.8 million youth currently use any tobacco product, including 6.6 percent of middle schoolers," according to federal agencies’ National Youth Tobacco Survey.

Nicotine use, especially electronic products such as JUUL pods that are found at convenience stores, gas stations, and minimarts, still impacts a solid amount of students up to the 12th grade. The FDA and CDC’s survey found use among students in that category to be 23.2 percent of that grade level.

“They are the biggest money making population for these devices,” said Dahl.

These findings, especially for middle school students, are a “very concerning” discovery regarding the health and development of the adolescent brain, said Dahl.

“The earlier they start, the more of an impact it has on their brain, and these are, oftentimes, permanent impacts on their brain that can’t be reversed,” she said. “Unfortunately, research suggests that nicotine exposure during adolescence may have lasting adverse effects on brain development and may lead to other negative outcomes.”

Overall substance use among a not-so-insignificant chunk of the adolescent population remains an issue that goes beyond easily accessible e-cigarettes marketed directly toward teenagers. Dahl additionally pointed out that “alcohol use remains the number one substance that our kids are using,” at an average rate of 30.5 percent among the country’s 8th-graders to high school seniors.

Mental health plays a significant role in why teenagers may engage in vaping. One of the major reasons why teens experiencing anxiety and/or depression may pick up the habit of ingesting nicotine is for using it as a coping mechanism. Users, especially earlier ones, may get a substantial boost in the dopamine they receive in the brain, but the positive feelings that electronic nicotine products can deliver for its users are typically contradicted by its found effects.

In TRY’s research, Dahl said, “Although most teens claimed to vape to deal with stress and anxiety, it has been found that, unfortunately, nicotine causes increased anxiety, increased levels of depression.” It can also affect parts of the young, growing brain that are responsible for memory, attention, and learning, in addition to causing already impulsive teenagers to engage even more greatly in risk-taking behavior, while reducing the amount of naturally occurring dopamine production in the brain and thereby contributing to the negatives associated with anxiety and depression.

North Haven High School graduate Emily Konopka recognizes the misconceptions that her former classmates had while using vaping as a coping mechanism, sharing with attendees her personal experiences of being around students who vaped.

“These kids are experiencing feelings they don’t know how to cope with. They don’t know how to cope with depression, anxiety, stress, whatever it may be, and then they’re vaping…and that’s creating a really bad cycle,” said Konopka. “I have personally seen firsthand that it can have severe effects.”

On the physical level, habitual vaping can cause increased heartbeat and increase acid reflux, while the toxic chemical compounds and heavy metals found in electronic nicotine products are also difficult for the human lungs to fully absorb and can lead to incurable damage to tissue in that part of the body.

Ultimately, e-cigarette vapes and other accessible nicotine products can have a gateway effect, with studies showing that “teens are six times more likely to move on to conventional cigarettes,” said Dahl.

Despite the host of health concerns that federal and regional researchers have found, there are means of prevention and intervention available for both parents and educators.

Dahl said that educators should look to “develop, implement, and enforce tobacco-free school policies” and “reject youth tobacco prevention programs sponsored by the tobacco industry” that “have been found to be ineffective for preventing youth tobacco use.”

Dahl also stated that concerned parents of teens who use e-cigarettes can discuss with their children the risk of using these products and “express firm expectations that their children remain tobacco-free.” In order to facilitate a more natural and comfortable conversation with their teenager, Dahl said that parents should avoid starting a discussion with words like, “We need to talk,” and instead ask their child about their thoughts on a situation involving an electronic vape product, such as asking their teen’s opinion when vapes come up in print advertisements or they see a store selling the products.

“A more natural discussion will increase the likelihood that your teen will listen,” said Dahl.

The next step for the North Haven LPC is to use the data it has collected from TRY’s research to create a multifacted action strategy called, “Seven Strategies for Community Change,” said former LPC head Nicole Mason. The data from TRY’s research will help to establish this public health framework. Mason said questions that will guide its creation will be, “How can we impact individuals on a community level?” and, “How can we also create community-level changes within the environment?”

For Konopka, it’s actions such as these that are critical in tackling an issue that is affecting millions of American teens—and it can start in North Haven.

“The only way we’re going to be able to get ahead of and really solve this is to take a proactive approach,” said Konopka.