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Vaping Update
You may have read or heard concerns being expressed by teachers and others about the increasing numbers of (often very young) teenagers vaping. But what is vaping? And should we be worried?
What are vapes?
Vapes are devices for inhaling a vapour containing nicotine and flavouring. Similar to
e-cigarettes, their primary purpose is to help smokers get nicotine in a less harmful way (than cigarettes), and even to quit nicotine use altogether.
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Potential risks
Vapes are still relatively new, so we do not yet know the long-term effects of regular vaping on the body—especially if someone has started vaping at a young age. Known risks include; battery explosions, worsening of pre-existing lung disease, EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury), metal particles (from re-usable vapes) and inflammation of the respiratory tract. Some illegal vapes have been found to contain high levels of lead, chromium and nickel.
Vapes and Young People
In March/April 2023, the proportion of children experimenting with vaping had grown by 50% year on year, from 1 in 13 to 1 in 9. While it is an offence to sell e-cigarettes to under 18s, only one in five children now say they never see vapes promoted, and 2.1% had been given a free vape as part of a promotion by an e-cigarette company. 48% had been sold the vape in a shop. (ASH, 2023)
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Hope UK’s response:
Hope UK teaches about both legal and illegal substances in our lessons and workshops, and so we have increased our focus on vaping this year. From our Junior Citizens workshops, to longer interventions, we help young people think through the potential health (and financial) risks of vaping, alongside discussing advertising, peer pressure and other related issues. We remind them that these devices were made for smokers, and that no one yet knows the longer-term effects of vaping on non smokers, particularly if they start vaping at a young age.
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Vaping e-learning
We have introduced an
e-learning unit on vaping—aimed at young people, which you may find useful.
It can be found here.
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Feedback from a recent session
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New Wine
If it’s summer, someone, somewhere must be camping—and Hope UK staff are among them. We braved the winds and rain to spend a week exhibiting at New Wine, a summer festival, this year held in Maidstone.
We hosted an exhibition stand where we could promote our work and demonstrate what we do. As we were there for a week, we were able to change the activities every day, so many adults and young people visited us every day to learn more.
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Activities included ordering caffeine drinks from most to least caffeine in a drink, working out what is, and is not, a drug, discussing vapes and nitrous oxide, and learning about alcohol and safety.
We met all kinds of people—including 13 year olds who are already vaping regularly, and parents who were struggling to manage drug use in their family.
At a stand, we are able to talk individually in ways we can’t when taking a session with a group.
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Teaching and Training
We have seen a big increase in the amount of in-person lessons and activities we are invited to lead this year. Towards the end of the school summer term we were extremely busy, taking lessons on vaping, county lines, grooming, drug awareness and developing peer resistance skills in particular. We were invited to take lessons in state and private schools, and worked with pupils from age 7 to the 6th form (years 12 and 13).
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Regular readers of our newsletter will know that we have increased the number of Junior Citizens Schemes (JCS) that we participate in and these have led to other invitations. This summer our volunteers are participating in summer camps and community days, opportunities that have all come from people seeing us work at JCS.
We were also invited to participate in summer camps run by the Lord’s Taverners, as part of their outreach work. They are able to immediately evaluate the impact of the workshops they host, and they found that after our workshop on vaping, 72% (40 out of 55) of participants said they were more confident about talking about the danger of vaping, and 76% said they will use what they learnt in the workshop in their daily life.
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Our sessions can look very different—some are quite formal, others extremely informal. All involve interaction and discussion, and ideally we like to include life skills, as good quality drug education is not just talking about drugs!
Meanwhile, our e-learning units are being used regularly—by an average of about 85 people a week.
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Coffree
Do you drink tea, coffee or soft drinks that contain caffeine? What happens when you stop? Nothing? Or do you feel a little unwell?
We are challenging you to give up caffeine—or your favourite caffeine drink—for the whole of October (gulp!). We invite you to donate what you save to help our work here at Hope UK.
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While caffeine is relatively harmless, many of us do become dependent on it, and it is always good to remind ourselves of how hard it can be for some drug users to quit using a substance which is strongly addictive and often harmful.
To find out more and sign up, go to hopeuk.org/coffree
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Volunteering
It is not too late to join our next training course to become a voluntary drug educator!
We train locally-based volunteer educators to work with their communities, run drug awareness sessions, help children, young people and adults to develop life skills, and promote healthy lifestyles.
Our training runs across 4 weekends (Friday eve to Sunday lunch) — all based in a church in East London—and we provide accommodation, food etc. All you need to do is be there!
If you, or someone you know, would be interested in helping us with this vital work, please feel free to contact us for more information or download an information pack here.
For reference, the next course dates are:
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Basic 1: 8th - 10th September
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Basic 2: 13th - 15th October
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Basic 3: 17th - 19th November
- Basic 4: January 2024
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Online Courses - Book Now!
We continue to offer our online sessions. Each one lasts one hour and costs £10.
You can book a place at our website: hopeuk.org/events
14th September 8pm
Vaping and Nitrous Oxide—Help for Parents
3rd October 11.30am
County Lines for Youth Workers
14th November 11.30am
Your youth group and drugs - Introduction for youth workers
5th December 11.30am
Healthy Relationships - Tools youth workers can use in their work
If we have taken a course you would have liked to attend, but were not free, let us know—we are happy to repeat them.
FREE POSTER available for you to use to promote our courses—ask us!
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Raising Funds
We are so grateful to all the individuals and trusts who continue to support our work. Sadly, raising funds has become more challenging to charities, following the pandemic and now with the cost of living crisis.
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Recently, Ben Sellers ran 3 marathons in 3 days to raise money for our work and in memory of his brother, Jon, who sadly died age 33, having mixed recreational drugs with alcohol at a party. Ben raised over £15,000 for our work, and we are so grateful to him and his family—although so sad that it was for such an awful reason. We will continue to do everything we can to help other families avoid this kind of tragedy.
Perhaps you can run a marathon? Or bake cakes, dance for hours or not talk for a while?! If you would like to help raise funds, please contact Thuli — who would love to help you get started.
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Songs of Praise & The Band of Hope Survey
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Did you see us on the Songs of Praise episode on July 2nd? The focus was the Temperance Movement, including the Band of Hope (our original name). It featured Mary, our Press Officer and long-term volunteer educator in Hertfordshire, taking a drug awareness session with a youth group. You can find the episode on i-Player, called ‘Temperance and Temptation’.
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Meanwhile, we are coming to the end of our survey with former members of the Band of Hope—we are now analysing the data and will produce our findings very soon. (It is not too late to get in touch with Ian if you still want to participate, but you would need to be very quick!).
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While we continue to develop new ways of delivering our work, we also honour those who went before us—innovating new youth work methods for their times, and providing a platform of excellence for us to build on.
We are looking forward to sharing with you some of the stories from our past, and investigating what long-term difference this made to the people involved.
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Head Office: Hope UK, 50 Gold Street, Kettering NN16 8JB
Charity number 1044475
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