Young vaping addicts

Thanks for the fascinating article “Juul heist” (October 2), which described the “only in America” rise and fall of this international icon of the vape industry, and its links to Big Tobacco.

My grandson got addicted to Juul four years ago at the age of 11, after a 16-year-old student from the US was boarding with his family. Mysterious packages would arrive for her through the post, and the kids would spend long periods in her bedroom, apparently having a lot of fun.

My grandson’s mother had no idea what vaping was and wondered what these small containers were that looked like memory sticks, lying around on the bedroom floor. By the time she worked out what was going on, her son had a serious addiction. The student left, so his access to Juul disappeared, but there were plenty of other similar pod vapes for sale here, easily bought online and delivered to the door before his mother got back from work.

It was the beginning of a destructive process that exacerbated pre-existing health problems, established addictive behaviours such as lying about vaping and carefully hiding the evidence, and resulted in him being excluded from school just after his 15th birthday.

As far as we know, he’s off the vapes now, but long after new regulations came in last November banning the marketing of these products and their sale to under-18-year-olds,