I wanted to find out what college students really think about vaping and their experiences, so I interviewed them about how they started, what vaping and cravings feel like, addiction, quitting, the vaping community, peer pressure, and marketing.
Their honesty and insights surprised me.
Four people interviewed for this article vaped before or at the start of college. They all had a broad understanding that vaping is bad, but knowing that didn’t stop them from trying it. One person, Interviewee #3, doesn’t vape, but has a roommate who does.
What surprised me most as I conducted these interviews to see what college students really think about vaping was how complicated vaping is for each person. I found that the common sentiment that vaping is bad isn’t helpful for anyone; people who vape and those who don’t, all deserve to be heard.
What College Students Really Think about Vaping: Reality of Vaping and Addiction
“Within a week, I was like, why is hit this all I ever wanna do?” Interviewee #2 said when talking about vaping for the first time in high school.
They stopped after that week, but still vaped occasionally, leading up to college.
“It was just around me, it was available, and I was like, hey, why not?” Interviewee #5 said. “And then I realized I kind of liked it. Once you get that buzz, you kind of chase it. So obviously, with any addiction, it kind of reinforces itself.”
There often isn’t a clear line where a person becomes addicted, but there are indicators. Interviewees brought up multiple times that a noticeable switch in their addiction was once they started buying and owning their own vapes.
“I realized once I was actually buying vapes, I was like okay, this needs to stop,” Interviewee #2 said. “I don’t have any [vapes] that I own anymore, cause I feel like when you own, you are addicted.”
They might choose to own so that they don’t have to burden their friends or always be the one using other people’s vapes. Owning a vape eases the decision to take a hit. Access to vapes and ownership directly correlate with more use, cravings, and a greater level of addiction.
“It’s just sitting there, it’s like having a bag of chips on your desk,” Interviewee #5 said. “And it’s like, don’t mind if I do, I’m just gonna grab one. I definitely notice when I do own, I’m a lot more anxious, in general, because it’s a stimulant.”
Quickly after someone starts to vape consistently, often daily, the desire to vape changes. Instead of being fun, it becomes inconvenient and habitual. Nicotine feels slightly good for a short period, and then causes—sometimes intense—cravings that they want to get rid of; more than they desire a brief buzz. Interviewee #2 described their friend’s experience with nicotine for the first time.
“It would be fun in the moment, but the next morning, I’d wake up and feel so dead inside. It would make me feel so much worse,” The friend said. Adding, “It is just hollowing and it feels almost alone… Nicotine is so little and then almost empty feeling after, it’s the only way to fill the void.”
The empty feeling is the difference between expectation and reality.
Hitting a vape once doesn’t satisfy the craving. The only way to get the desired feeling is to continue vaping and continue feeling unsatisfied. Vaping becomes almost entirely about getting rid of cravings. The fun is superficial; relief becomes the new goal. What vapes offer is a very accessible and easy solution to that problem. There is also no limit to how much someone can vape, allowing nicotine intake to reach much higher levels.
“I think anyone that’s used it for a while would understand there comes a point where the buzz kind of goes away,” Interviewee #5 said. “You don’t even feel better [when you vape], but you just stop wanting it… There’s a threshold for how much your brain can absorb. Once you reach that threshold, you just can’t get that buzz again. It’s like a wet sponge, and if you dump more water on the sponge, it’s not going to absorb anything else. I have so much in my system that I can’t feel buzzed anymore. Then it just kind of feels like nothing.”
That is an extreme and isn’t representative of everyone who vapes. It shows, however, how easy it is to take in a massive amount of nicotine. It shows that just one, two, or many hits will never be enough. Adding to the convenience, vapes can be used indoors without much social pushback, especially when they’re used in their own dorm room. Many people, when in someone else’s room, ask for permission first, out of respect.
However, this assumption that it’s okay to vape indoors, and that it doesn’t smell much, doesn’t apply when an addict vapes consistently in a small room.
Interview #3 was with someone who doesn’t vape, but is roommates with someone who, at times, vapes every few minutes. They attempt to use vapes that supposedly don’t have much smell, but when they’re being used constantly, the air in the dorm becomes noticeably thick. Interviewee #3 hasn’t mentioned anything to their roommate because they claim to need nicotine to focus, study, and reduce anxiety.
“They do say some smell good,” Interviewee 3 said. “I don’t distinguish the flavors mostly because whenever I smell a whiff, I close my nose as soon as possible, but then, is it better to breathe it into your nose or through your mouth? To me, they all don’t smell good.”
Having a private space enables addicts to vape more often without judgment from people around them. This is one way college can foster addiction. As we gain more independence, we can choose isolation.
Alternatively, going outside, being involved on campus, and staying friends with people who don’t vape are all great ways to reduce nicotine dependence.
And if you live with someone who vapes, know that you have a right to breathe clean air. Consent for someone to vape in your dorm should never be a negotiation.
“Be stubborn,” Interviewee #3 said. “And stand by your thoughts. Actually express discomfort with that sort of thing. Because the silence is a form of acceptance, when there’s not necessarily a lot of communication, it’s like, oh, they didn’t say anything. They’re fine with it. Let me do more.”
Multiple interviewees mentioned anxiety and how vaping feels like it relieves anxiety, while also being the cause of it.
What College Students Really Think about Vaping: Quitting Vaping
All interviewees expressed the desire to end their addiction, even if just thinking about life after college.
External causes of anxiety are also influential and lead to more vaping. The addiction is highly contradictory, and the interviewees understood that. Unfortunately, our brains don’t function rationally, especially when nicotine is chemically influencing someone’s ability to make decisions.
“I’m pretty neutral on quitting,” Interviewee #1 said. “I do want to, to some extent, but it’s not super important to me to quit. I thought a lot about quitting, and I’ve gone through bouts and stuff. It’s just hard, and it’s very easy to not quit. It can seem like a very simple solution when that’s often not the case.” This interviewee hopes not to be vaping a year from now, and jokingly claimed to be in denial about the necessity of quitting.
This sentiment is common: quitting is inconvenient and not enough of a problem yet. It’s not just inconvenient, it can be difficult to do alone while in college. Stress from classes, living on our own, and having friends who vape is not a productive environment for quitting.
Many people elect to reduce the amount that they vape rather than quit entirely. As mentioned previously, not owning a vape contributes significantly to reducing dependency. Another factor is cost; each disposable vape costs around $10–$15. This adds up to be a very expensive pastime, with interviewees saying that they buy around 3 every month in times of greater dependency (or more if severely addicted).
Interviewee #5 has quit for several months and strongly believes that anyone can quit if they want to. The worst of the withdrawals come in the first two weeks, and beyond that, the social and habitual aspects of it take longer to go away, but get easier over time.
“You’re feeling anxious without it,” Interviewee #5 said. “You’re feeling frustrated without it, or you’re feeling irritable, or you can’t sleep. Any nasty withdrawal is just the knowledge that you can make it go away so easily. Sometimes it’s just so easy to cave.”
A lot of the time, people vape because they were reminded that it’s an option, or sometimes they want to simply because other people around them are. When other people are vaping, it helps justify their decision to do something they know isn’t good for them.
Friends and the community addicts built through vaping are huge barriers to quitting.
What College Students Really Think about Vaping: Vaping From a Broader Perspective
“It’s a social thing,” Interviewee #5 said. “It can be like a conversation starter. It’s really bizarre because it’s something that is so obviously bad for you, but I think that is what sort of creates that shared struggle feeling… You also find that for the most part, people who use nicotine a lot have got each other’s backs when it comes to [supporting the] addiction.”
This community is why some people want to start vaping. That’s why Interviewee #1 started vaping, because at the time, they felt an allure around this secret club they could be a part of. Especially in college, once people are older, people who vape don’t want their friends to start vaping. The community that the interviewees found is through starting conversations with people, but vaping isn’t the only way to meet someone or make new friends.
“It feels like there should be an ‘in group’,” Interviewee #2 said. “But there’s a slight community, and it’s not a ‘we’re cooler than you’ sort of community. It’s just a community where I know who else would have a vape or cigarettes on them. So it’s more like I know who to ask for if I want nicotine or if I want to go smoke a cigarette and not feel alone.”
The friends that people make through vaping end up being friends because they enjoy spending time with each other, not because they mutually vape. This is why constantly restating the idea that vaping is bad doesn’t work.
The unknown about reality causes people to pressure themselves into vaping or wanting to vape.
Even though peer pressure is uncommon at my age, a lot of people start when they are younger, less informed, and are more likely to pressure themselves (as well as others) to start. On the other hand, vape companies design their products to appeal to children and young people. It is never a child’s fault for choosing to try vaping. Blaming individuals who are now addicted isn’t productive, especially when a lot of addicts made the decision when they were a different person who, by circumstance, became susceptible to marketing.
“Vapes are absolutely marketed towards our age group,” Interviewee #4 said. “I’ve seen people with vapes that literally have games on them. Sometimes, I will interact with other people who vape, and we’ll trade to try each other’s flavors.”
The design—colors, lights, screens, interesting flavors—isn’t the first thing people think of when talking about being marketed towards. We think of advertisements online or on TV, not how the product is designed. But the flavors and silly, unserious nature of the design have a big impact on how they’re perceived. Interviewee #1 said they feel completionist in wanting to try all of the flavors. Adding that the screens and how ridiculous they look are one of the things that attracted them to trying vapes.
“I definitely feel more guilty having one cigarette than I do, like, 50 puffs off of a vape,” Interviewee #5 said. “Because the imagery of a cigarette feels a lot more harsh, even though they may be equally harmful. It does feel a little silly.”
Once addicted to nicotine, Interviewee #4 thought the flavors were why they wanted to vape, but eventually realized that they would choose any vape, regardless of flavor, to satisfy the urge.
Flavors aren’t just a way to make vaping seem harmless, they’re also a tool to obscure the perception of nicotine intake, which is what will get people addicted and continually purchasing vapes.
Interviewee #5 believes in regulating vapes to reduce carcinogens and ensuring higher quality parts to reduce harm. They learned recently that flavored vapes were banned federally in 2020, but didn’t know because the FDA regulation somehow didn’t halt the sale of flavored tobacco. This led all 4 interviewees and people across the country to use flavored disposable vapes. There would need to be a proper federal- and state- ban on all flavored vape products to be very effective. However, due to vapes’ main danger being their convenience, any added inconvenience would reduce harm and how addictive they are. Interviewee #5 believes strongly in vape addicts’ ability to quit with enough willpower. Fostering an environment suitable for quitting and receiving support from friends is necessary too.
“There’s a lot of guilt associated with it,” Interviewee #5 said. “That you’re putting on yourself. With any poor health choice, you’re going to kind of consider the consequences of that, but at the same time, I think it’s often demonized to an almost absurd degree. And I think that if you are struggling with that, you should be realistic about it. It’s not crack, it’s not heroin. You’re not gonna die from withdrawals, and you’re not gonna die tomorrow because of it.”
We need to have more open conversations with friends and family members, both those who vape and don’t vape, without demonizing the addiction. Tough topics and conversations, such as vaping, need to start in middle school. If middle schoolers are old enough to vape, they are old enough to talk about it.
People start because they glamorize what they don’t know, and think that vaping might allow them to fit in. Companies that produce vapes are actively designing their products to seem harmless and appeal to young people.
Instead of just thinking about vaping as a bad thing, try to think about it within the context of stress being put on kids and college students, or that we have been taught not to talk to strangers (and therefore feel like vaping is a good way to meet people and start a conversation). Try to think about vaping as a habit, and how people in the United States today aren’t comfortable sitting with boredom now that we have phones.
“Vaping is awful, and I wish I never started,” Interviewee #4 said. “I spend so much money on vapes and find myself leaving social situations to go vape. Never start.”
Resources:
- If you use tobacco and want help to quit, please check out 802 Quits.
- Learn more about Flavors Hook Kids VT and join our campaign to stop the sale of flavored tobacco in Vermont.
Guest Author: Wade Winter
Wade is from Chittenden County, Vermont, and goes to college in Massachusetts for Electrical Engineering with a double major in Writing and Rhetoric. He has a passion for music, art, history, and storytelling, and likes to write about Vermont communities and politics. Wade tries to get out into the mountains and read in his free time.
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