Yampa Valley teens help peers quit and avoid nicotine

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part feature on underage nicotine use in the Yampa Valley. This story focuses on Moffat County, and November 5 will focus on Routt County.

Craig resident Kali Hedman first tried vaping at age 12 when she was stressed during high school.

By age 13, Hedman was vaping e-cigarette vapor five to six times a day, which lasted about a year.

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“One of my friends gave me a vape and I quickly became addicted,” Hedman said. “I thought it was just a one-off. It made me feel good for a while, and then I started to stress when I couldn’t get it. It bothered me that I was hiding things from my mother, but on the other hand, I was addicted.”

With the support of Moffat County Youth Action Council and the free program My Life, My Quit, Hedman quit vaping. She said the training helped her realize the toxic chemicals she was putting into her body.

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“I was hungry, but I just fought through it,” Hedman said. “Physical addiction was difficult. It took me a while, about two to three weeks, before I actually quit and walked away. One day at a time.”

Now a freshman at Moffat County High School, Hedman competes on the cheerleading squad and is happy to have regained her lung capacity.

“When I was vaping, my lungs hurt and my body didn’t feel good,” Hedman said. “I couldn’t run because my lungs would hurt. I couldn’t breathe the same way. And when I stop, my lungs don’t hurt anymore. I can exercise without getting short of breath.”

Hedman is now active with the youth council, which focuses on helping other teens avoid nicotine.

Council sponsor Mackenzie Mixon, coordinator of the Partners for Youth empowerment program, said the council’s nicotine avoidance campaign was chosen by Moffat middle and high school youth.

“This was a big issue that they all agreed on and that they all deal with in their daily lives,” Mixon said of the outreach and education efforts now in their third year.

The youth council — with support from Communities that Care Moffat County and Bear River Young Life — organizes clean and sober fun activities that attract up to 200 students per event, Mixon said. The group hosts events such as coloring and foam parties, black light volleyball, bowling and movie nights, and an ice skating party scheduled for November 1 from 9pm to 11pm at Loudy-Simpson Park Ice Arena, with details on the Mocoyouthactioncouncil Instagram page. You can talk to several trusted adults at each event and there is an information table with information about nicotine avoidance.

The Youth Action Council is supported in part by the nonprofit Rise Above Colorado, which is dedicated to showing youth that the majority of teens are not using nicotine, alcohol and drugs. A spring survey by Rise Above of a limited group of teens found that 75% of middle and high school students in Routt and Moffat County had not vaped in the past month. However, that percentage is worse than the national average of 81% who don’t vape, says Jonathan Judge, program director at Rise Above Colorado.

Former youth council president Hailey Schaffner said the group works to educate, inform and support fellow youth with helpful tools about better choices and health.

“Our committee saw that young people were struggling with addiction and had the right resources to seek help,” Schaffner said.

Schaffner said the goals are simple, including easy access for youth to tools, free online resources and information to discover which cessation technique works best, while also giving school staff members better ways to reach students without scare tactics.

Students and teachers said — although nicotine products are prohibited by law for people under 21 — vapes are widely used because they are easy to obtain and conceal. Hedman said she never paid a dime for a vape in a year of using several times a day because she had previously received used vapes from older teens.

The judge said underage youth generally obtain vapes through older friends, siblings or by bypassing restrictions to order vapes online. Young people generally pay for vapes online with Paypal or Venmo accounts, and parents don’t pay attention to the boxes that arrive in the mail.

“There’s a big vacuum there for parents to exercise any control,” Judge said. “You don’t have to be too pushy, but you do need to know what is coming to your home through the mail.”

Some young people say the permissive attitudes of parents and older adults, as well as lax identification processes in some Northwest Colorado stores, also enable underage vaping.

The judge said there is a misconception that vaping is less dangerous than cigarettes and other substances, so some parents are turning a blind eye.

“Vaping is incredibly addictive and can serve as a stepping stone to tobacco and marijuana,” Judge said.

Some vaping companies are owned by major cigarette companies and have skirted flavor and marketing regulations designed to reduce vaping’s appeal to underage users, Judge said.

“The companies are very adept at creating marketing strategies that circumvent the laws while still appealing directly to youth,” Judge explains. “The taste plays a big role.”

Peer-to-peer pressure to use or not use nicotine is very powerful, Judge said.

“Empowering teens works,” Judge said. “If teens are provided with accurate and credible information, we can see dramatic shifts in public health.”