Mates and vapes: tackling industry influence on teenage smoking

Most people choose their PhD topic based on something they love.

But Amelia Yazidjoglou chose something she hates.

“What’s the nice way of saying this?” Yazidjoglou ponders before settling on: “I’m strongly opposed to the e-cigarette and tobacco industry.”

Her motivation came from a trip to the UK in 2019. There, use of e-cigarettes, also known as vapes, was embedded in popular culture.

“E-cigarettes were everywhere. They were advertised on walkways, billboards, buses, bus stops,” she recalls.

Shocked by the number of young people using vapes, Yazidjoglou was worried Australia might go down the same path. When the opportunity to be involved in e-cigarette research at the Australian National University came up, she jumped at the chance.

“The survival of the tobacco and vaping industry is purely dependent on addicting the next generation to nicotine. And that’s not ok,” says Yazidjoglou.

“But to prevent adolescents from vaping we have to understand why it is that they do it in the first place.”

So Yazidjoglou teamed up with Generation Vape, a research project led by Cancer Council NSW in partnership with the Daffodil Centre and the University of Sydney, to find out more about vaping behaviour in teenagers.

“I think adolescents want to tell their stories. They really embraced having a platform to discuss how e-cigarettes are impacting their lives,” says Yazidjoglou.

From Generation Vape survey data, Yazidjoglou learned that teenagers were well aware of the health risks. More than eight out of ten 14-17 year olds agreed that vapes are unsafe to use, can harm the developing brain, damage lungs, and cause addiction.

“Clearly knowledge and health education alone are not enough to drive behaviour,” says Yazidjoglou.

“So there’s something else more compelling – and that’s the industry’s narrative on vaping, where they distort the benefits and dismiss the harms. They also influence social behaviours such that adolescent vaping is normalised and linked to teenage identity.”

As one teenager told her:

“… it’s so common now, it’s kind of like, normalised… it’s like, standard to do it. It’s not like taboo or anything like that. So, people, everyone just does it.”

The idea that ‘everyone is doing it’ just isn’t true – seven out of ten of teenagers have never vaped.

But Yazidjoglou says this misconception is encouraged when teenagers see people vaping – unchallenged – at the bus stop, at the shops, or walking down the street. This gives the impression that vaping is common and socially acceptable, which is also backed up on Instagram and TikTok –sending the message that if you don’t vape, you are the odd one out.

“We need to reduce access to e-cigarettes so we don’t have people vaping or selling vapes on every street corner. We need to get rid of pro-e-cigarette advertising and reduce product appeal just like we have done with tobacco over recent decades,” says Yazidjoglou.

She remembers being a teenager when Australia successfully introduced strict tobacco control and anti-smoking campaigns in the 2000s.

“I thought smoking was gross. Not one of my friends smoked and we would walk away from people smoking in public.”

Australia recently implemented policies to curb e-cigarette use, particularly among non-smokers and adolescents. The comprehensive 2024 reforms restricted the sale of e-cigarettes to pharmacies, with restrictions on dosage, flavours, packaging and advertising.

Yazidjoglou says there is promising early evidence suggesting that use may be declining.

In addition to investigating what encourages teenagers to vape, Yazidjoglou has also explored influences that prevent them from doing so. She discovered that some teenagers value their ability to play sport so highly that this has affected their decision to reduce or avoid the habit. One teenager said:

“…people are like struggling to breathe … I like to stay active and I like to be healthy so that’s not something I would like to do.”  

Yazidjoglou says this shows we need a multi-focussed approach to stamp out vaping in Australia.

“A young person who vapes is three times as likely to take up tobacco smoking compared to one who doesn’t vape,” says Yazidjoglou.

Her PhD research has already contributed to the evidence underpinning the introduction of e-cigarette control policies in Australia, and she hopes it will continue to inform positive change in the future.

“I grew up in a smoke free world. Protected from industry influence and tactics trying to addict me to their products – how dare the e-cigarette industry so boldly target this next generation?”