Is your teenager addicted to vaping?

“Some complained vociferously,” says Rachel who has two kids at JFS. “They said the school was overreacting. But I think the decision was absolutely right. Vaping is a big problem among Jewish teens, particularly at parties. I’ve heard of ambulances picking up kids from north-west London homes in the early hours. The other month my daughter’s best friend was coughing and choking so violently after an e-cig, as they call them, she could hardly breathe. She thought she was going to die.”

Her fear was not far-fetched. There have now been 57 vaping-related deaths in America, and last November one British teenager almost lost his life to e-cigarettes after they caused a catastrophic reaction in his lungs. In the same month, one Belgian teenager did die from vaping, and in Israel the health ministry is so worried about the danger of e-cigarettes it is considering a blanket ban on their sales, without waiting for the Knesset to pass new regulations.

For the truth is that while smoking cigarettes is pretty much the worst thing you can do for your health, the case against e-cigarettes, now a £15.5 billion industry, is piling up. In the largest study examining e-cigarettes and strokes to date, researchers found that vaping is associated with an increased risk of heart attack. The World Health Organisation says e-cigarettes are “undoubtedly harmful and should therefore be subject to regulation.” And it is surely pertinent that many life insurance companies do not distinguish between smoking and vaping. They classify e-cigarettes as the nicotine products they are.

And now that we are in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic, the associated risk of respiratory viral infection for vapers is surely higher than ever. When my daughter took part in the Sun’s investigation, University of Stirling professor of health policy Linda Bauld who also works for Cancer Resarch UK, said this: “The oils in e-cigarettes can contain formaldehyde or heavy metals which are not good for developing lungs, and could contribute to respiratory conditions.”

Public Health England is less moved. This is the reply I got when I asked the body if vapers were at increased risk from the coronavirus. “While the evidence on e-cigarettes is still developing, it is clear that vaping is far less harmful to the body’s respiratory system than smoking. Most vapers in England use e-cigarettes to quit smoking or stay smoke- free. There is no circumstance in which it is safer to continue to smoke than to switch completely to vaping.”

Hmm. Does this explain why some Jewish parents actually buy their kids vaping pods, the cartridges filled with different flavoured liquids that are stuck into the battery-operated device of an electronic cigarette?

Yes, you read that correctly. Katie Taylor, the founder of Latte Lounge, a virtual coffee shop for women over the age of 40, many of whom are Jewish, has heard of parents supplying 14 and 15 year olds. “Some want to look cool,” she says. “Others are just ignorant. They vape because they’ve given up smoking, or are trying to, and from this somehow extrapolate that it’s OK for their kids to vape. They think vaping is harmless. Pods come in fruit flavours which seems to encourage some Jewish parents to think of them as sweets.”

But the overwhelming majority of Jewish parents who contact Latte Lounge are worried sick.

“Members are looking for therapists for their 12 and 13 year olds who they describe as vape addicts,” says Taylor.

“Others say their children are being socially excluded because they refuse to vape — they aren’t invited to parties and the like. One mum wrote to us saying her son is scared to invite kids round in case they vape in his home. He is frightened and disgusted by vaping —his friends are not.”

And then there are those who are scared stiff at the effect vaping is having on their children’s physical health “One mother got in touch to say her son is asthmatic and in total denial about the very real dangers of his addiction,” says Taylor.

“She was desperate for advice from us. There is no doubt about it, vaping is a massive problem among Jewish teens.”

So massive that for every vaping post published on Latte Lounge, there are another 25 from anxious Jewish parents that you won’t read. “We reply privately and put them in touch with helplines other parents have recommended,” explained Taylor

For her part, Taylor wonders from where Jewish kids get the money to vape. Given that the average UK vaper spends £327.99 a year on their habit, it’s a highly pertinent question. And one I put to my friend Zoe whose daughter Talia has now been vaping for a year.

“I don’t know for sure where she gets the money from. She asks for a fiver, I give her one and then she goes out,” said my friend. “Is she going to the corner shop and buying pods? Probably. Does she have other means of buying them? I don’t know.”

What Zoe does know is that Talia vapes regularly. The first time she discovered a pod under the 15-year-old’s bed, she confronted her. Talia shrugged, it must have fallen out of a friend’s bag, she said. But the following week when she was emptying the pockets of her daughter’s school blazer on laundry day, Zoe found two more.

Since then she has found countless more pods in the corners of her Camden home. She bins them every time, confronts Talia every time, but it feels like shovelling snow when it is snowing, she says. Talia no longer denies she’s vaping (“the evidence is, frankly, overwhelming,”) but Zoe thinks her daughter is probably highly addicted and she’s deeply worried about it.

In the first half of 2019 alone, 69 new vaping shops opened on our high streets. One year and a global pandemic later, all vape stores have been closed. Yes, Jewish teens can still order vaping paraphernalia online, but it is surely easier to police Royal Mail deliveries to your home than it is to control what your teenagers spend their when they are out of the house. Every cloud?