In June 2019, for­mer pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes ad­dressed stu­dents at ‘We Day T&T’ and warned youths about the ef­fects of so­cial me­dia dis­tort­ing their re­al­i­ty.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2024, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­pealed to artistes to “clean up their lyrics,” which were neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­enc­ing our youths.

Dr Em­manuel John­son, lec­tur­er in the De­part­ment of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences at the UWI, has re­port­ed that “the preva­lence of cur­rent al­co­hol use among stu­dents over­all is 42.5 per cent.”

On April 2nd, 2023, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds said, “Our young­sters to­day are ex­posed to a tremen­dous amount of me­dia vi­o­lence”

On Ju­ly 21, 2019, Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don wrote, “Chil­dren in our coun­try are be­ing sex­u­alised as ear­ly as eight years old on av­er­age. Teens and young adults who are caught in pornog­ra­phy ad­dic­tion usu­al­ly say they saw porn at sev­en, eight, or nine years old…. Gen­der flu­id­i­ty al­so now seems to be an epi­dem­ic. The Unit­ed Na­tions be­gan with a five-let­ter gen­der the­o­ry back in the 90s. Now, it has passed eight let­ters. Once gen­der is de­fined by de­sire, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of types will con­tin­ue.”

So­cial me­dia, mu­si­cal con­tent, me­dia vi­o­lence, pornog­ra­phy, and gen­der am­bi­gu­i­ty are heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by Amer­i­can/Eu­ro­pean cul­ture.

Par­ents al­so have to deal with peer pres­sure and hor­mon­al surges af­fect­ing their teenagers. Par­ent­ing is a priv­i­lege and a chal­lenge.

A few weeks ago, a 13-year-old girl with vi­ral symp­toms, vis­it­ed my son Vinash, who is a physi­cian. She was treat­ed with parac­eta­mol and a cough mix­ture. Af­ter two weeks, she was start­ed on al­ler­gy med­ica­tion and a steroid in­haler. She knew about the Sa­hara dust and gave away her par­rot Camille (named af­ter her favourite MP). Af­ter no im­prove­ment, she was start­ed on an­tibi­otics.

The clue to her ill­ness was on­ly even­tu­al­ly re­vealed by her younger broth­er, who snitched that she had been va­p­ing.

Johns Hop­kins car­di­ol­o­gist Michael Bla­ha voiced his con­cern about va­p­ing among young peo­ple who have nev­er smoked, tak­ing up the habit and be­com­ing ad­dict­ed to the nico­tine in these de­vices.

What was help­ful to wean off old­er smok­ers is now the gate­way of nico­tine ad­dic­tion in younger vapers. Two mil­lion young adults use elec­tron­ic cig­a­rettes and va­p­ing as their first nico­tine-based prod­uct.

The wide se­lec­tion of colour­ful pods, bot­tles, and car­tridges with a va­ri­ety of flavours, in­clud­ing can­dy and bub­blegum, are made to ap­peal to youths.

Bla­ha not­ed that the ap­peal of vape flavours may pose a broad­er dan­ger to the pub­lic and al­though “va­p­ing may not be as dan­ger­ous as smok­ing, the dif­fer­ent flavours, dyes, nico­tine, THC and many oth­er ad­di­tives and chem­i­cals, caus­es con­cern …many users get even more nico­tine than they would from cig­a­rettes and can buy car­tridges, with high­er nico­tine.”

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, the CDC record­ed over 2,800 hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions with 68 deaths due to (EVALI) e-cig­a­rette or va­p­ing-as­so­ci­at­ed lung in­jury, a po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal syn­drome. Eighty per cent used nico­tine or THC-con­tain­ing e-cig­a­rettes ob­tained from “in­for­mal” on­line sources, deal­ers and friends. With our present econ­o­my and bar­gain hunters, we could be in deep trou­ble.

Young per­sons view va­p­ing as more so­cial­ly ac­cept­able than cig­a­rette smok­ing but it opens the door­way to cig­a­rette use and might ig­nite the next smok­ing epi­dem­ic.

The med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty pushed hard against the glob­al to­bac­co in­dus­try to reach where we are. We still face a bat­tle with al­co­holic drinks which are now made sweet­er, with fan­cy names tar­get­ing our young women.

A WHO me­dia re­lease on Oc­to­ber 20th, 2021, stat­ed that the Eu­ro­pean Re­gion has the high­est rate of new breast can­cer di­ag­noses and the IARC wrote, “Al­co­hol con­sump­tion was re­spon­si­ble for al­most 40,000 new breast can­cer cas­es in the re­gion.”

I have count­ed 87 dif­fer­ent bot­tles of al­co­hol in a gro­cery and peo­ple can’t get Forex for med­ical treat­ment abroad.

In 1988, the car­toon Joe Camel tar­get­ed teenage smok­ers. Now they trick us with de­vices giv­ing clouds of sweet-smelling vapour.

I com­mend our Min­is­ter of Health, who spoke on “tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions and ac­tions” as his min­istry’s pol­i­cy po­si­tion to re­duce this va­p­ing ap­peal.

But we need to do more. Our coun­try con­ve­nient­ly adopts cer­tain laws from the USA/Eu­rope. What about adopt­ing the death penal­ty, chem­i­cal cas­tra­tion for child rapists, and in­creas­ing the drink­ing age to 21 years?

Our PM an­nounced our neu­tral­i­ty with the Venezue­lan elec­tions.

So we can act alone and stand strong when it is in our best in­ter­est. In the same vein, to save our chil­dren we can ban e-cig­a­rettes, ex­cept for med­ical use at our smok­ing ces­sa­tion clin­ics.

When in May 2023, WIT­CO’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said the com­pa­ny was plan­ning to in­tro­duce va­p­ing prod­ucts, Dr As­ante Le Blanc ex­pressed her dis­ap­point­ment.

Le Blanc’s lega­cy of at­tempt­ing to make T&T a safer place for our chil­dren, rather than a rich­er place for the con­glom­er­ates, must be ac­knowl­edged.