Representative Lauren Underwood discusses the vaping epidemic in the community
Representative Underwood, along with a panel of experts, answers a student’s question about Tobacco 21, and how that will change our community.
Representative Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14), along with an insightful panel, hosted a community listening session about vaping and the problems with it on Oct. 1. As vaping has become widespread and very common in our community, it causes harm to many people. It has sent countless numbers of people to hospitals, and some cases have even been fatal.
“In the last week, I’ve seen [vaping products] every day. It is a problem and it’s not getting better,” Underwood said.
During the beginning of the session, Underwood and the rest of the panel discussed what vaping has looked like in our community. Physicians and other experts on the topic also talked about what kinds of illnesses have been associated with vaping recently. Students from schools in the area, West Aurora High School and Benet Academy, also spoke on the panel to discuss firsthand experiences of what vaping is like in their schools.
Following that, the audience was able to ask questions to the panel about how they are trying to help and what the future looks like for our community regarding the topic. The audience was filled with students, parents, and teachers from our area.
Many students participated in the discussion and were passionate about fixing this issue in the community.
“I believe that with education and spreading the knowledge, it will really help curb the use of vaping products. It’s no use if you just come here and don’t do anything. You have to talk to people who vape or who are thinking about vaping and let them know what the hazards and risks are,” senior Krishna Vasudev said.
A main topic discussed was how easy it is for teenagers to obtain vaping products. Many audience members brought up how teens can walk into a store and purchase these products without being questioned. The state has recently put a bill in place to fix this issue, which makes it necessary that people need to be 21 or older in order to purchase tobacco.
“The state of Illinois has already passed Tobacco 21, but that kind of action needs to happen nationwide, and I’m feeling good about the prospects of getting there,” Underwood said.
Several other topics arose, such as what to do with companies that produce vaping products. Companies, such as JUUL, are privately held companies and are not required to disclose information about their products to the public. The panel agreed that this is the reason it is hard to stop these companies from selling to large amounts of consumers.
“I’m so encouraged that people in your generation and people in my generation and older are all engaged in this issue. Think of this more as the beginning and there’s going to be more to come,” Underwood said.
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@The Invincible Truth • Oct 5, 2019 at 9:06 am
While I do agree that locking the bathrooms seems immature and terribly annoying for everyone, reducing convenience can, in some cases, be enough to change behavior. I don’t know whether in this case it’s effective or not, and I find it a bad policy regardless as it punishes everyone for the actions of a few; but I don’t think that parents and staff believe “kids don’t even know what addiction is like.” Perhaps you mean there’s a mentality of “why don’t you just quit” which I would say isn’t specifically targeted at teenagers.
The Invincible Truth • Oct 3, 2019 at 11:35 am
To be quite frank….the school is being immature about this “epidemic”. Locking the bathrooms? Really? Instead of trying to fight the fact that people are vaping, and fighting it with such force, how about you consider that these problems are caused by addiction? Of course, an adult wouldn’t understand, they believe that because they are older our problems aren’t as important. Believe me, we WANT help, but we don’t want help from someone who treats us like a child, these people are ADDICTED and they want to be treated as “adults”. How would you feel if someone told you. “oh, you don’t even know what addiction is like, you’re just a kid”. Addiction can happen to anyone at any age, but our staff, our whole elder society simply ignores that. Our problem isn’t the vaping continuing and getting worse, its the action that authority takes.
Unknown • Oct 3, 2019 at 7:47 am
The thing with all the vaping is some of the teachers just don’t care and when they restrict the whole school and don’t expect a backlash that kind of amazes me that the number of kids vaping didn’t go up. Not to mention the locking of the bathrooms. The teachers know the bathrooms are locked but when you were to get back from the bathroom they would make you explain why it took a decent bit of time.
yeaster fam • Oct 2, 2019 at 11:53 am
the main problems are the schools themselves, they dont have a strict policy. Metea especially has this problem where they dont punish these cruel vape nationsers
darkstripe • Oct 2, 2019 at 9:47 am
referring to it as an “epidemic” is the funniest thing. ah yes the worst epidemics: smallpox… spanish flu… aids… vaping