Youth Vaping Crisis: Montana’s Response To Nicotine Salts Trend

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - With school back in session, the Department of Health and Human Services (DPHHS) and the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) want to warn parents and caregivers about the increasing use of nicotine through vaping and the growing use of nicotine salts.

I spoke with Kris Minard, Tobacco Education Prevention Specialist for the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Minard described a program designed to address the problem.

OPI and DPHHS Team Up to Warn Students About Vaping and Nicotine

“The OPI has a program called 'Tobacco Use Prevention Education' that is completely funded by them,” began Minard. “The Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program is part of DPHHS, and they fund our program so that we can provide resources to schools to help prevent youth tobacco use in Montana.”

Minard said students are experiencing increased stress and have begun dealing with that stress by the use of nicotine through vaping.

Students Are Dealing with Stress By Vaping and Using Nicotine Salts

“Mental health is a big issue,” she said. “Kids tell us they start vaping to relieve stress. Life in high school and middle school can be very stressful, and they don't realize that, yeah, that first buzz that they get from the nicotine might feel kind of good, but it ends up being something that actually creates more stress in their life as they go through withdrawals and need more and more nicotine to get that first original feeling that just eventually goes away.”

Minard said the use of nicotine salts by students has become more prevalent.

“Nicotine salts are a different animal,” she said. “These days, cigarettes are made with what we call free-based nicotine, and so the nicotine salts were developed. A lot of them are synthetic, and they go down smoothly. They don't have that really awful ‘throat hit’ that makes smoking so uncomfortable, and the flavors that they add to the nicotine include gummy bears and cotton candy, and flavors like that, unfortunately, are very attractive to kids.”

OPI and DPHHS Warn Parents About 'Jools' That Deliver Nicotine

Minard said ‘JUULs’, the devices that deliver nicotine, come in many varieties that a parent might not recognize as a nicotine delivery device.

“These devices, they are hard to identify,” she said. “The original ‘JUULs’ came out and they looked like a USB drive, so they looked like something that belonged in a school. Now, some actually have electronic game consoles inside them. You can play a game that looks like Pac-Man, or you can vape on your vape, and it said it had 25,000 puffs and that's the most I've ever heard of and that is more than a carton of cigarettes or nicotine.”

Click here to find out more about these devices and how families can work together to get kids off these potentially addictive devices.