A new study has raised concerns over rising vaping among South African (SA) high school learners. The research led by Professor Richard Van Zyl-Smith, from University of Cape Town found that e-cigarettes are now the most commonly used inhaled substance, often linked to cannabis and tobacco use.<\/p>\n
The study involved 25 000 students.<\/p>\n
Van Zyl-Smit says the surge in teenage vaping is fuelled by poor regulation, aggressive marketing and social media influence.<\/p>\n
His expert research reveals that e-cigarettes have become the dominant inhaled substance among adolescents.<\/p>\n
Van Zyl-Smit\u2019s research, published in the South African Medical Journal, surveyed learners at 52 schools in eight provinces. It found that 16,8% of school pupils use vaping products, while 36,7% said they had tried e-cigarettes at least once.<\/p>\n
The President of teachers\u2019 union National Professional Teachers\u2019 Organisation of SA (NAPTOSA), Thabo Manne says his members are not equipped to deal with the vaping phenomena, which has the potential to affect academic performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cVaping poses a significant health risk in schools, because these are young children. In most cases, we find that now they bunk classes to go out so that they can now satisfy their urge and so on. We have seen that there is a lot of nicotine in these issues and time and again, they will disturb the classes, requesting to go out behind the classrooms and in the passage ways,\u201d says NAPTOSA President, Thabo Manne.<\/p>\n
He says that students smoke in class and during lunch time at school.<\/p>\n
\u201cClasses and schools are no longer respected because of this thing. It is very important that something should be done to cut this thing of learners coming to school with these vapes,\u201d adds Manne.<\/p>\n
–SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":33059,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-33056","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The study involved 25 000 students.","published_date":"","news_description":"The study involved 25 000 students.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/33056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/33056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33057,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/33056\/revisions\/33057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=33056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}