I am proud to report that New Jersey just became the first state in the nation to ban flavored vaping products. I would like to applaud Governor Murphy for signing the bill into law on Monday, as well as, thank the leadership and members of the New Jersey Senate and General Assembly for supporting this bill. Flavored vaping products are especially appealing to children and teens, and this ban will hopefully help to diminish the appeal of vaping and decrease the chance of kids becoming hooked on these dangerous products.

Combatting the growing vaping epidemic is of upmost importance, and a cause that we are championing at the Partnership For A Drug Free New Jersey (PDFNJ). We just launched a vaping awareness media campaign at the start of 2020 in collaboration with the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General that has been distributed to more than 3,500 schools throughout the state. The campaign’s message that there is simply nothing safe about children and teens vaping, emphasizes the risk associated with by comparing e-cigarette use to skydiving without a parachute, and includes a pathway to gather additional information at VapeFactsNJ.com. In addition to the schools, the anti-vaping campaign will also will appear on billboards, trains and buses throughout the state.  We are in the midst of a nationwide explosion of teens and teen use of vaping devices or e-cigarettes, which the United States Surgeon General declared has reached epidemic levels. I am thrilled that the Governor is taking a hard line against targeting teen and adolescents with the flavored vaping products.

We hope PDFNJ’s campaign along with the new vaping ban will raise awareness of the dangers associated with vaping and e-cigarettes. Sadly, in 2019, more than one in four high school students reported using an e-cigarette in the previous 30 days, according to preliminary results from the CDC’s annual National Youth Tobacco Survey. The results indicated a significant increase in teen vaping, up from 20.8 percent of high schoolers in 2018 to 27.5 percent in 2019. The use of e-cigarettes has exploded in the past decade, especially among teens. In 2011, just 1.5 percent of high school students said they used an e-cigarette.

As we continue to discover new information on the effects of vaping, I encourage you to stay informed by following our social media pages (@DrugFreeNJ) and frequently visiting our website for current news at www.drugfreenj.org.