E-cigarettes were first introduced in the U.S. in 1963 but didn’t start gaining popularity until recent years. Vaping is a commonly known form of e-cigarette that many teens and young-adults have done and are currently doing.

Many lung illnesses caused by vaping that doctors have labeled incurable have broken out, causing multiple hospitalizations of young-adults and teens. “A sort of epidemic is going to break out and we won’t know what to do,” Bonneville Freshman Logan Rigby stated.

Case manager Jolynne Shelton decidedly stated, “It seems as though there’s already things happening, as far as political, that are changing so that people are protected so there will be some laws and things changed.”

As of Sept.  27, 2019, 9 people have died from vaping related causes and many more have been hospitalized and rehabilitated for months. Although many are hopeful that this might help change people’s perspective on e-cigarettes, it can also be assumed that it won’t in the long run. “Thousands of people have died from both alcohol and tobacco-related issues, and yet people continue to drink and smoke,” continued Rigby. It can be suspected this may be the case for vaping and e-cigarettes as well.

Because of the recent deaths and illnesses breaking out, people assume that if ever needed, our society will try to resolve this issue in the future. But a lot of people believe that as time goes on, people will become less caring for these types of issues. “I think we’ll have people of power rise up and say that they need funding to do so and then spend that funding on completely unrelated things,” Rigby decidedly stated.

Stores, including the notorious and popular Walmart, have started to discontinue the sale of e-cigarettes in hope of lessening the use of them. “You can get anything online…you just have to have the right price and know where to get it,” Shelton also states.