Young mum shocked by dire discovery in daughter's schoolbag
A Perth mother has recounted her horror at discovering a vape in her 12-year-old daughter’s schoolbag.
Mother of three Sarah Goodyear’s day only went from bad to worse when she learned that not only was her daughter using the electronic cigarette, but that the device had been sold to her at school.
“In all honesty, I was mortified,” she told 7News’ Amelia Broun. “It has completely imploded now. We’ve, to some extent, left it a little bit too late.”
“There’s a real urgency to it now,” she said, “you would not believe how many teenagers are doing this.”
Although Sarah knows she is not alone in her current situation - just last year, a mother in Melbourne found a vape in her 7-year-old’s bag - it is likely to come of little comfort, with experts suggesting that children who vape are three times more likely to pick up a smoking habit later in life.
Those same health experts warn that some vape devices can contain the same nicotine content as hundreds of cigarettes, while the chemicals present in different aerosols are not safe for inhalation, and are not worth the damage they will do to organs.
“It’s almost like the genie’s got out of the bottle,” Cancer Council Western Australia’s chief executive Ashley Reid reported, “and we’re desperately trying to put it back in.
“We don’t want to undo decades of really amazing, world-leading work in tobacco control to let vaping get away from us.”
In response to the growing crisis, the Western Australian government has announced it will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new anti-vaping campaign from the Cancer Council. The online resource, set for release later this year and said to complement existing awareness campaigns, will feature information about the health impacts of vaping, as well as support venues for those who want to quit.
Meanwhile, a number of private schools in Perth have gone as far as to install vape detectors in their bathrooms, but public schools have shown no sign of following suit.
Some private Perth schools have installed vape detectors in toilets, but that’s not something on the agenda for public schools, despite 9 in 10 Australians supporting tougher vaping regulations.
Western Australia’s Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson noted that the state already leads the nation with their vape regulations, as vaping is illegal there without a prescription.
“Not only is vaping harmful,” she said, “it often contains harmful substances found in cleaning products, weed killer, nail polish remover and bug spray.
“Emerging research has found that non-smokers who use e-cigarettes are three times more likely to go on to smoke tobacco cigarettes.”
Images: 7News