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Chatham

CK youth vaping alarms health officials

Chatham-Kent's Medical Officer of Health is asking Ottawa to take action to prevent or reduce severe pulmonary illness related to vaping by young people.

Doctor David Colby is asking Health Canada to regulate and oversee vaping solutions.

Youth vaping has become a public health issue across North America and the Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit has been kept very busy lately dealing with youth vaping at high schools and elementary schools. Jeff Moco, a youth engagement coordinator, made a presentation to the Board of Health on Wednesday and told members that cheap, readily available, and mislabelled vaping products with high nicotine concentrations are causing behavioural and family problems in the community. Moco said every high school in Chatham-Kent has an issue with vaping and the problem is trickling down to elementary schools. He said 24 vaping tickets were issued between January and June of 2019 and the nicotine addiction problem is becoming worse because vaping is cheaper than smoking cigarettes.

Dr. Colby said youth vaping has become one of the most rapidly changing issues and it is changing every day.

"Not only does nicotine and cannabis, if applicable, have to be labelled and accurately assessed but to make sure there are no toxic substances that can cause lung injury in vaping solutions," Colby said.

Ontario's Minister of Health has ordered public hospitals to provide the Chief Medical Officer of Health with statistical information related to incidences of vaping-related severe pulmonary disease and Colby said that will help formulate a plan to deal with the issue.

"Unless you have accurate figures on the extent of this problem it's very hard to analyze it from an epidemiological perspective," the doctor added.

Colby said youth in the U.K. are not having a problem with vaping because it is better regulated and he thinks it's premature to ban vaping like India is until we find out what is causing the severe respiratory illnesses in young people.

"It's both alarming and disturbing that for some reason this type of behaviour has become very cool and desirable for young people to engage in," said Colby.

Dr. Colby said to date there have been no hospital admissions or severe pulmonary illnesses in Chatham-Kent because of vaping but one youth in the London area has been diagnosed with severe breathing problems linked to vaping. He said there have been seven deaths in the U.S. due to severe pulmonary illness but the exact cause is not yet known. Colby said there have been no such deaths in Canada that he knows of.

He said he will be pushing federal election candidates to do something about the issue over the next few weeks.

The Chatham-Kent Public Health Board is expected to vote in favour of the Health Canada resolution at the next meeting on October 16 and circulate it to other public health units across Ontario to get an endorsement.

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