Bucks Youth Summit 2024 – The Vape Space
Format
- The Vape Space was hosted in The Gallery at The Waterside – a bright, wide corridor.
- It included “Vaping Facts and Myths” learning, a group discussion section, and a survey with a fun basketball hoop activity – young people wrote their anonymous information and feedback down and then scrunched up their paper and threw it into basketball hoops on a board.
- It was hosted by Buckinghamshire Council officers from the Public Health and Trading Standards teams. A young facilitator from the Youth Voice Executive Committee – Izi – also helped facilitate.
- Approximately 80 young people attended the Vape Space across the day. This included both young people who do and do not vape.
What did young people say?
The key messages that young people shared in The Vape Space 2024 are:
- Vaping should be talked about more – especially the dangers of vaping.
- Lots of us feel confident in refusing a vape, but peer pressure, stress and the attractiveness of the vape (colours, flavour, cloud) make it more difficult.
- One of the big problems is how lots of people go to school toilets to vape.
- Vaping is bad for your health.
- There needs to be a Vaping Support Line or other services to help young people stop vaping.
You can read Public Health’s full write up of the findings from this conversation space.
So what?
Sharing the findings
The insights from the Vape Space 2024 are being used to help shape new interventions and support services for young people around vaping.
The Public Health Team’s report has been shared with various professionals within and beyond the Council in The Buckinghamshire Tobacco Control Alliance in June.
Recommendations
The report was shared alongside these recommendations:
- Professionals should gather more insight to understand how to best disrupt and prevent young people from accessing vapes.
- More education should be developed for young people on:
- skills on how to navigate peer pressure (e.g., how to communicate effectively, role playing/scenarios
- healthy ways to manage stress
- how a young person’s developing brain is affected by key influences around vaping (including peer pressure and attractive colours and flavours)
- Peer support groups should be piloted within schools to help reduce stigma and encourage open conversations around vaping, its harms, impacts on others, and signposting to local support.
How young people can further help
If you are a young person who is interested in reducing young people’s access to vaping, consider joining our Underage Test Purchasing project. You can help reduce sales of alcohol, vapes and other age-restricted products to children and young people across Buckinghamshire, helping ensure the safety of our community.