The child vaping crisis, articulated by parents and teachers across the UK (The child vaping crisis: ‘From what my daughter says, 90% of her year do it’, 14 June), is certainly something we are seeing in our drug prevention and education work with children and young people. The national drug education charity Hope UK is delivering drug awareness sessions to many thousands of children through the nationwide Junior Citizens Scheme for year 6 pupils who are about to move up to secondary school.
Vaping is something they are familiar with. Most children know of older young people who vape. But they do not have a clear idea of the difference between smoking and vaping. The latter has become so normalised, the perception is that vaping is just something everyone does.
