If You Have Teens in Your House, This Pedcast is For You (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)

Just when we thought we were going to get American kids to stop adopting the horrible, nasty, destructive, habit of smoking tobacco cigarettes, here comes the electronic-cigarette industry with more heartache. Find out the recent trends with e- cigarettes use in the U.S., how their manufacturers, in my opinion, are able to lure so many kids into using their products, and most importantly, some simple things you can do to keep your teens from being vaping in this edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics. Image by Pixabay Musical Intro The Slow Death of Cigarettes in the U.S.     If you are a long time Doc Smo follower, you have heard me talk about the incredible success we have had in the U.S. at convincing teens not to start using cigarettes.  I must admit, I have been a little obsessed about cigarettes  because when I was a child, it seemed like every adult around me smoked – and I hated it. Some of my earliest memories were running into hot dangling cigarettes as I ran through the house playing or struggling to breath in a closed-up car while the adults smoked. During my childhood, approximately 50% of Americans smoked regularly.  Tobacco companies were some of the biggest companies on the planet in those days, until the tobacco settlement of 1998, when cigarette use slowly  declined to 20%. Out with Joe Camel, out with gorgeous young models brandishing cigarettes in magazines, and out with all the other marketing tricks that target young people to take up the habit. And these changes worked! We were actually well on our way to ridding ourselves of this horrible addiction which robs an average of 10 years of life from its long-term users and causes so much disease. Tobacco 2.0 and Today’s Children – The Rise of Vaping     Then came the meteoric rise of vaping. Almost overnight, the JUUL Corporation along with other companies created a new nicotine habit that pulled a large percentage of American children to a new vice – nicotine addiction via the electronic cigarette. High tech, sleek, and eas