MISSION Australia Far West NSW will be running a seminar online and in-person for parents concerned with their kids’ vaping habits, with education a key element.
Vaping Decoded is a collaboration between Mission Australia and Blurred Minds, which is an academy and education resource centre that focuses on vaping and substance awareness.
The free hour-long seminar is aiming to discuss and help parents, carers and educators that have concerns with youth vaping, and how to tackle the issue at home through open dialogue.
For example, the seminar will include ways to prevent vaping, how peer pressure and marketing can make young people more susceptible to vaping, and the health risks associated.
Mission Far West NSW’s Erin Reberger said that parents concerns over vaping are growing, especially as younger children start to take up vaping.
“We work with young people aged 12-17 and adults aged 18-24 who have either identified substance use concerns or are looking for education,” Ms Reberger said.
“In that program, we actually run a day rehabilitation program for people that live with substance use concerns, but we’ve also started delivering educational programs to school aged children as well; some as young as Year 5 and 6.”
Mission has teamed up with Blurred Minds and contacted them about running the vaping seminar to provide information to parents.
“One thing that I noticed is that parents really need to be provided with what vaping entails, but also how they can have some conversations with their young people,” Ms Reberger said. “Blurred Minds have agreed to run the vaping webinar for us, and we’ll have our youth drug and alcohol team at Thyme on Argent where we can answer any questions and talk to parents.”
One of the key parts of the seminar, according to Ms Reberger, is explaining and discussing the marketing of vaping as being ‘healthier’ than smoking and the featuring of flavours, colours, and branding that appeals to children.
“We talk about some of the flavours that are marketed and the fact that they’re marketed to young people,” Ms Reberger said.
Ms Reberger also said that there is a lack of understanding of what vapes actually are made of.
“What we find with our school sessions, which is with Year 11 students, is that a lot of the time the students are thinking it literally is a strawberry flavour and don’t understand what else comes with that,” she said.
“So we really need to start to break down what a vape actually consists of and need to get that message across to parents; because it has been marketed that vaping is much better than smoking.
“However, they haven’t been around for long enough for us to actually know the damage that they potentially can cause.”
Ms Reberger said that the amount of nicotine versus smoking is also not very well-known.
“I would say that in our interactions with young people, smoking is fairly rare; however, vaping has basically become a normality amongst young people.
“It is scary because they’re completely unregulated.”
The in-person seminar held at the Thyme on Argent is free of charge and includes a light supper, and the seminar is available online.
“It’s a great way for parents to come along and be given some strategies, but also have some conversations that it’s actually okay to discuss some concerns that you may have for your child,” Ms Reberger said.
The event is on Wednesday, May 14, with the in-person event running from 6.30-8.30pm, and the online webinar going from 7pm-8pm.
Spots are limited so registering is encouraged.
Register at https://www.blurredminds.com.au/webinar-parents-mission-australia/
