AUC Campaigns Against Vaping

By: Shaden Elsheikh 

@shadenelsheikh 

While e-cigarettes continue to grow in popularity, Dean of Students George Marquis wants to raise awareness of their impact on public health.

He joined forces with the Center for Student Well-being to start an anti-vaping campaign due to concerns over student’s health in October.

“Based on the reports that we have read from abroad, mostly in the United States, many new lung diseases are being linked to vaping. There has been more than 30 deaths in the past three months and we don’t want anything to happen to the students,” Marquis said.

Many smokers have turned to e-cigarettes, or vaping, as alternatives to traditional cigarettes because they are believed to be harmless.

Most of the harm a smoker is exposed to is from the thousands of chemicals that are burned and inhaled through the regular cigarette. Since e-cigarettes don’t burn, doctors are at odds with whether the tobacco-free vaping devices are harmful or not.

However, the growing number of health complications from vaping is pushing more people and institutions to take action.

There has been 1,479 confirmed and probable lung injury cases associated with  the use of e-cigarettes, or vaping products, as of October 15, 2019, according to the US-based Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Seventy five percent of these patients were under 35 years old.

The CDC is currently performing lab tests to uncover the reasons contributing to the sudden and abrupt outbreak.

A Public Service Announcement (PSA) video regarding this issue has been aired on AUC TV in the Abdul Latif Jameel Hall in the New Cairo campus.

The PSA video titled E-Cigarettes are Dangerous showed footage of young adults vaping with subtitles which read phrases such as “tastes good” and “looks cool.” The video ends with “yet, it’s a killing device.”

As this is part of their campaign, Marquis explained that the video is to show how dangerous vaping is and how there have been recent incidents of vapes exploding in users’ hands.

“We made this video to address these two points and we hope that students will take this information into consideration when they think about vaping… We don’t want them to [vape],” Marquis told The Caravan. 

Ali* described his old vaping habits as “addictive.” He explained that, at the time, he did not intend on quitting.

“Nothing convinced me stop it. It just happened… I got caught up for three weeks straight and didn’t have time to maintain my vape,” he said.

Iman El Omary, associate director of Coaching for Learning and Success and  counselor at the Center for Student Well-being explained the reason behind dedicating an entire campaign to anti-vaping is that a lot of research shows it is quite detrimental to health.

“There are a lot of misconceptions such as thinking that it’s healthier and that you’re safer when the research is showing us otherwise,” El Omary said.

While the number of vapers on campus is just a few in comparison to cigarette smokers, Marquis feels the campaign is nonetheless necessary.

“It’s not like everybody is vaping or even a large percentage of students. But because it’s so dangerous, if we can persuade one student not to vape, we feel that we’ve helped save a life,” Marquis shared.

Reham* a psychology sophomore, said that she tried vaping to test the different flavors.

“I [felt] like it’s too heavy and too damaging to the body,” she said.

The psychology student described herself as a “social smoker” and didn’t worry too much about getting addicted. She did, however, mention that she tried “juuling”,  which is named after a famous vape brand, which doesn’t have intense flavors like other vapes.

“When you start juuling you lose the temptation for cigarettes,” she said.

The Medical Services Department on campus has a cessation clinic which serves to help smokers at AUC quit the habit.

The medical clinic does not acknowledge vaping as a healthy alternative to cigarettes. However, it encourages nicotine patches as an alternative to cut down on smoking, Marquis said.

*Names in this article were changed due to the sources’ request.