Through social media, children have fingertip access to topics and trends far beyond their maturity level, and primary school deputy principal in ACT education directorate Debra Sayers says it is causing behavioural changes in some students.

Of particular concern for educators, Ms Sayers says, is the fact that students in Years 5 and 6 are vaping, and becoming dependent on nicotine.

Ms Sayers says: “The addiction is real. And as educators, if a child puts their hand up and says they need to use the bathroom, of course they can use the bathroom.”

“I think if they were somehow confiscated, that would be a problem, but we don’t do that, because we don’t really see them. 

“They’re easily hidden, there is not a smoke smell, not a cigarette smell, it can often be: ‘oh no, I just sprayed perfume.’ 

“It brings out a side of little people that we prefer them not to have until they get a bit older. 

“We don’t want them lying to us and sneaking about to vape.”

After seeing the increase in vaping both at schools and in the community, Ms Sayers says she wanted to get involved with the creation of educational modules being rolled out by ACT Health. 

Before teaching, she was an education officer with the National Heart Foundation, in which she visited schools and taught young people about the dangers of a poor diet, smoking and lack of exercise.

She says she now worries all the great work Australia has done on reducing rates of smoking is at risk of unravelling.

“The fact that there is something out there that is more attractive than a cigarette, not hard frankly, but just as hideous, was a real problem for me,” she says.

“Smoking can be easily sold as being hideous for you, but this vaping thing, it’s much harder to make it hideous.”

Over the past few years, doctors, ACT teachers from public, independent and Catholic schools, and students have been designing an educational course.

The Vaping, Youth and Health eLearning Package is geared towards preventing students in years 5 and 6 from starting to vape, coming off the back of a launch of educational modules geared towards years 7 and 8, and the realisation that the uptake in vaping was actually occurring at a younger age. 

It supports teachers to develop and deliver learning programs about vaping so that students understand the risks and health effects, which Dr Sally Singleton, deputy chief health officer ACT, public health physician and general practitioner, says are often misrepresented as non-existent compared to tobacco smoking. 

Dr Singleton says there is data showing a national rise in youth who have “ever vaped”, including in the ACT, and there is also data showing that those people have then gone on to engage in smoking tobacco, marking the first rise in many years in young people who are reporting that they’ve tried smoking.

Dr Singleton says: “The best data we have on that is from something called the Australian secondary school students alcohol and drug survey.”

“The 2022 survey found that in [the] ACT, students aged 12 to 17, almost one third, so 27 per cent, reported having ever used an e-cigarette, and about one in seven reported that they had vaped in the last month, and concerningly, one in 20, or five per cent, were vaping more than 20 times per month.

“Our concern is that there’s a large number of people who’ve reported that they’ve ever vaped, but also a large number that are reporting that they’re continuing to then be vaping frequently.”

Ms Sayers believes banning things outright often gives the perception of the item being cool, and as such, the solution lies in education, which is why the education modules are so important. 

She says it’s available to all teachers to access via the Healthy Children’s Learning Hub.