Disposable vapes hooked a generation and the damage may be irreversible
By Lance D Johnson
Post on September 4, 2025
The high school hallway is thick with the saccharine scent of mango and cotton candy—a smell that doesn’t come from lunchboxes, but from the clouds of vapor exhaled by students between classes. Touted for years by health authorities as a “safer” alternative, vaping has instead blossomed into a full-blown public health crisis, one that has slipped through the fingers of regulators like smoke itself.
The numbers trace an alarming trajectory: between 2021 and 2024, vaping among young adults didn’t just rise—it exploded, overwhelmingly fueled by the cheap, sweet-flavored disposables that fit as easily into a backpack as a pack of gum. But behind the fruity aromas and sleek designs lies a grim reality that new research is forcing us to confront. Recent studies presented to both the European Respiratory Society and the American Heart Association reveal a devastating double blow: these devices can cause lung damage comparable to traditional cigarettes, while the volatile organic compounds they produce inflict significant cardiovascular harm.
This mounting evidence suggests vaping is rewiring developing brains and setting up a generation for a lifetime of health risks, directly challenging the long-standing safety claims now deemed dangerously premature. With cardiologists and pulmonologists sounding the alarm, the call for robust intervention and stricter regulations is growing louder, as the world races to curb a crisis it once mistakenly endorsed.
Key points:
- Vaping among young adults surged from 17% to 26.5% between 2022 and 2024, driven by disposable e-cigarettes marketed with candy-like flavors and vibrant packaging.
- New research reveals vaping may damage young lungs as severely as smoking, contradicting years of public health messaging that positioned e-cigarettes as a “less harmful” alternative.
- Experts warn of irreversible harm to brains and hearts, with nicotine and toxic chemicals disrupting development in adolescents and young adults—some of whom have never touched a cigarette.
- A University of California study linked vaping to a 32% higher stroke risk and a 24% increase in cardiovascular disease, while another review identified 133 harmful chemicals in e-cigarettes, 107 of which are carcinogenic.
- Despite the risks, the NHS still promotes vaping as a smoking cessation tool, while critics argue the industry’s social media marketing and lack of age controls have turned a generation into lab rats for an unregulated experiment.
- The UK has banned disposable vapes, but global calls for stricter action grow louder as long-term data remains scarce—and the potential fallout looms larger.
The bait and switch: How vaping went from “quit tool” to youth epidemic
When e-cigarettes first hit the market in the mid-2000s, they arrived with a promise: a way for smokers to kick the habit without the tar and toxins of traditional cigarettes. Public health agencies, including the UK’s NHS, cautiously endorsed them as a harm reduction tool, a lesser evil in the fight against lung cancer and emphysema. But somewhere along the way, the script flipped. The target audience wasn’t middle-aged smokers trying to quit—it was teenagers who had never lit up in their lives.
Professor Maja-Lisa Løchen, a senior cardiologist at the University Hospital of North Norway, didn’t mince words at this year’s European Society of Cardiology congress in Madrid. “We have the data,” she told a room full of fellow experts. “We know they are not harmless.” Her concern isn’t just about the immediate effects—it’s about the long-term rewiring of young brains and bodies. Nicotine, the addictive core of both cigarettes and vapes, is particularly dangerous for adolescents. Studies show it can alter brain development, impairing memory, attention, and impulse control well into adulthood. But vapes deliver more than just nicotine. Løchen’s presentation highlighted 133 potentially harmful chemicals lurking in e-cigarette aerosol, 107 of which are known carcinogens.
So how did we get here? The answer lies in a perfect storm of regulatory gaps, corporate marketing, and cultural shifts. Disposable vapes—cheap, colorful, and sold in flavors like “blue raspberry slushie”—flooded the market with little oversight. Social media platforms became the wild west of vape promotion, with industry-paid influencers pushing products to millions of young viewers. “This is a largely unregulated global market,” Løchen warned. “Vaping appeals to adolescents because it is very cheap, it tastes and smells like candy, it’s sold without age control, and perceived as harmless and fun.”
The result is a 26.5% vaping rate among young adults in 2024, up from 17% just two years prior. And unlike previous generations who picked up smoking as a rebellious rite of passage, many of these kids weren’t smokers first. “The most common reason for vaping in the young is not smoking cessation,” Løchen noted. “It’s curiosity.”
The body as a battleground: What vaping does to young lungs and hearts
If curiosity is the hook, the body pays the price. The European Respiratory Society’s recent findings dropped a bombshell: vaping may cause as much lung damage as smoking. This flies in the face of years of public health messaging that positioned e-cigarettes as the “healthier” choice. But the data doesn’t lie. A 2023 University of California study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that vaping increases the risk of:
- Stroke by 32%
- Cardiovascular disease by 24%
- Asthma by 24%
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by 46%
- Mouth diseases by 47%
For comparison, smoking’s risks were far higher—but the gap isn’t as wide as once believed. “It increases your blood pressure, your heart rate, and we know that the arteries become more stiff,” Løchen explained. “It could be even more harmful in children.”
Why? Because young bodies are still developing. The cardiovascular system, the lungs, the brain—all are in a delicate phase of growth that nicotine and toxic chemicals can disrupt permanently. “I worry that vaping may be causing irreversible harm to children’s brains and hearts,” Løchen said. “Of course, we have to wait for long-term data, but I am absolutely concerned.”
Professor Susanna Price, a consultant cardiologist at London’s Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals, echoed those fears. “We are seeing an increase in children vaping, but what we don’t yet know is what that translates to in long-term cardiovascular risk because they haven’t been around long enough,” she said. “I think there is a push to suggest that vaping is safe, but we don’t know that.”
Fast forward to 2024, and vape companies are taking advantage of the situation:
- Flavors that appeal to kids: Bubblegum, cotton candy, sour apple—these aren’t flavors designed for adults trying to quit smoking.
- Social media saturation: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are flooded with vape influencers, often paid by brands to glamorize the habit.
- Disposable, affordable, and easy to hide: Unlike cigarettes, which require a lighter and leave a smell, vapes slip into pockets and dissipate quickly.
- Lack of age verification: Online and in-store sales often bypass ID checks, making it easy for minors to buy.
“This is not about harm reduction anymore,” Løchen said. “This is about creating a new generation of addicts.”
Experts suggest a multi-pronged approach to combat the issues:
- Stricter marketing bans: No more cartoon packaging, no more social media ads targeting teens.
- Flavor restrictions: Limit sales to tobacco and menthol only, eliminating the candy-like appeal.
- Age verification crackdowns: Fines for retailers who sell to minors, both online and in stores.
- Public health campaigns: Honest messaging about the risks, not just “vaping is better than smoking.”
- Long-term studies: Fund independent research on vaping’s effects over decades, not just years.
But perhaps the most critical shift needs to happen in how we talk about addiction. For decades, the narrative around smoking was “just say no.” With vaping, the message got muddled: “It’s safer, so why not try it?” Now, we’re seeing the consequences.
Lance D Johnson
