MONTE VISTA — Rio Grande County Public health nurse Paul Wertz and three members of Rio Grande Prevention Partners Youth Group came before the Monte Vista City Council to tell them about the impact of nicotine products.
“Basically, why we’re here today is to hopefully make you aware of what I consider to be a huge problem within our community and our state, and really our nation,” said Paul Wertz. He shared his perspective as a public health nurse saying, “If this was measles or tuberculosis, even just the flu, we would consider this an epidemic outbreak. What we’re talking about is vaping. Nicotine delivery devices among our youth.”
Wertz shared with the council some results from the latest completed Healthy Kids Colorado survey. The survey is filled out by youth all over the State, every other year. The information he presented them with was from a survey done in 2017. Currently there is another survey being administered in the Colorado school systems and they hope to have the new data by early to late summer of 2020.
On the survey, youth were asked if they had ever used a vape product. The information from the survey pertaining specifically to San Luis Valley youth showed that 49.2 percent of the Valley’s adolescents have used a vapor device. The state average is just slightly below the Valley’s with 44 percent of youths having used a vapor device at some point. On Dec. 17, 2018, the National Institutes of Health stated ghat a nationwide survey found that High school seniors who reported vaping “just flavoring” increased to 25.7 percent from 20.6 percent in 2017. Among 10th-graders that percentage rose to 24.7 from 19.3. Although we are comparing two different surveys, the percentage of Colorado youth vaping is nearly twice the national average.
Another question the survey asked was if the youths had used a vapor device in the last 30 days. Schools across the nation showed that about 17 percent of students had. In the San Luis Valley findings showed that about 20 percent of youths had used a vaping device.
Max Garcia, Andres Villa, and Chloe Hindes are all high schoolers with the Rio Grande Prevention Partners youth group. They each shared with the council how this vaping epidemic has affected them as youths.
“I think the Healthy Kids data are a good baseline to get especially at first. But since it’s a self-reporting survey not all of the kids are going to answer honestly,” said Garcia. He felt because of this the numbers are actually much higher than what the survey results show. “Anyone over 18 can go buy tobacco products. They can go out and buy these for the younger kids. What I see is that especially the upper classmen, usually seniors, they’re able to go out and get this. That just passes down to the younger classes. I think that raising the age to buy tobacco would be really useful because that would cut off access to high school ages and be good overall.” Garcia also shared how his perspective is that adults didn’t really know-how bad it is. “They don’t necessarily see how bad this is. But in the locker rooms and in the bathrooms kids are doing this and it’s really prevalent everywhere.”
Villa also shared his thoughts with the council saying, “I would like to voice that five years ago, 10 years ago, nobody had heard about people dying from the use of vapor products, and now due to its current spike we see many people have died. I think the last time I saw it there was 25 people who had died because of a direct correlation between the usage of vaping products and their death. I’d like to express that we (youth) are the ones that are going to create changes for our future. Ultimately it relies on adults and all of you guys the facilitators, but we’re creating our own future. When we are your age those changes that we made are going to be the most important for the youth that will come after us.” Villa also shared that he thought raising the age for being able to purchase vaping products would help. He also felt that these products were being specifically marketed toward younger people. Flavors like bubblegum and mango he felt were being geared toward younger consumers. “Ultimately it’s the youth that does this for the youth and it’s instrumental for us to succeed and create a blossoming community,” said Villa, “Things matter, we have to understand that we need to not ruin our future.”
“I think I can say, and I’m pretty sure all the youth in here can say that they know somebody that is not just using vapes but are addicted to vapes,” Hindes told the council. “That to me is really important because being addicted means they could be wanting to get out, but they can’t. Then there’s all the recent deaths that are coming up and all the health problems. It’s scary for all the youth.” Hindes told the council that she felt if there was any kind of restriction they could put on these products it would help. She felt it would help give them a push to get out of their addiction. “Any little push to get out of that addiction I know would make a huge change and help a lot of kids to not do it,” commented Hindes.
The youth also brought up that when the legal age for drinking was raised it significantly helped limit the number of minors drinking alcohol. They hope that similar restrictions can be made to help limit the amount of youth vaping. They asked Monte Vista officials to be leaders in solving this problem in the San Luis Valley. The council agreed with them and said they would try to do what they could to help.

Rebecca Copley is a San Luis Valley native who covers news stories in the Monte Vista, Colorado area. She can be reached by email at [email protected]