There has been a considerable amount of media coverage on the exciting national roll-out of our Vaping Prevention Program for young Australians. Most recently, Associate Professor Emily Stockings (Program Lead for Smoking, Vaping and Mental Health at The Matilda Centre), spoke with Jacinta Parsons on ABC RN Life Matters. They discussed the Vaping program, trial, outcomes, and some stats on rates of vaping among young people (vape uptake can occur in children as young as primary school age).
You can listen to the full ABC RN Life Matters episode, Federal Government expands education program to combat teen vaping, here.
Listen to a snippet of Emily talking about the Vaping program, trial and outcomes here:
Read a short transcript from another part of the interview:
“Should we be waiting for more evidence before we roll out these programs?”
Emily: Look, we can sit back and we can wait for more evidence, and that was sort of the government approach when we did sit back and rested on our laurels when e-cigarettes first became an issue in other countries. But the risk is that we see this increase continue at rates that are almost exponential at the moment. We cannot afford to do that. This trial doesn’t stand alone; we’ve used the same method, the same program where we engage young people; we have a whole scientific advisory committee; we draw on the evidence; we put it all together; we get really cool animators to make it highly desirable; we get young people to voice over the characters and talk through the scenarios. We’ve done this for a number of other substances over the past 30 years or so. The one that we did for alcohol, which follows the same kind of program, the same methods, we found significant reductions in alcohol-related harms up to 7 years after the program. So at the moment, given that there is nothing else, and we’re at the risk of doing nothing, this is the best evidence-based program we have available. I’m a researcher, I stand by the science, I want to be rigorous, I want to make sure it’s peer-reviewed. That process, if we were to follow that and to wait, we’re talking years, and we can’t afford years, so this is what we’ve got. And it’s the best so far.
Read more on the evidence behind our programs here, and about what “evidence-based” really means (with specific reference to the OurFutures Vaping trial) here.
Emily fulfilling her radio DJ dreams in the ABC Tardis studio
For more information on the national Vaping Program roll-out, as well as a list of other relevant media coverage, click here.
Featured image: a still taken from the OurFutures Vaping Program cartoon.
Author: Francesca Wallis
