By Sarah Davison, Industry Reporter
Though tobacco smoking has fallen out of favour amongst Australian youth in recent years, we’ve witnessed the rise of a popular alternative: vaping. No longer contained to high school parties, the popularity of vaping has seen a significant increase in students vaping on campus. Earlier this year, the South Australian education department confirmed that 350 vaping-related suspensions have been handed out to children in 2022.
vaping has been linked to “dependence; cardiovascular disease; cancer; respiratory disease; oral diseases; reproductive outcomes; injuries and poisonings; mental health conditions; and environmental hazards with human health implications”. Young people who vape, either with or without nicotine are also three times more likely to take up tobacco smoking as those who have not used e-cigarettes.
What does the curriculum say? The Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (AC:HPE) takes a salutogenic approach to teaching about smoking through dedicated focus areas and achievement standards in the personal, social and community health strand, throughout primary and secondary, but particularly in the critical ages of Years 9 and 10.
ACHPER national president Sue Whatman said ACHPER supported this salutogenic approach, by working “with HPE teachers across multiple professional learning opportunities in every state to bring the AC:HPE to life in young people’s worlds”. “Learning about vaping is not about instilling fear about something that might happen to them in the future,” she said.
In Victoria, schools have taken to installing hi-tech sensors to detect and deter students vaping in school bathrooms.
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Alarmingly, there is emerging evidence of the harms associated with vaping, particularly for young people. A 2022 review of research by Australian National University revealed that
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Taking a salutogenic approach means to find the strengths and resources that young people bring with them to learning environments, rather than assuming them to be always “atrisk”, needing saving by adults.
HEALTH & SAFETY
“It means understanding the social and cultural factors underlying the marketisation of vaping, seeing the impact of vaping through their eyes and allowing students to propose ways in which peers might support each other in resisting becoming, or choosing to be no longer, just another commercial customer of the nicotine industry.” Term 4, 2022 | school-news.com.au
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Vape detection, deterrence
