‘Throw it in a dumpster fire.’ New text service helps young Kentuckians quit e-cigs.
Young adults in Kentucky who want help to quit vaping can now receive free encouraging texts to do so, thanks to a new partnership between the state public health department and a national texting service.
The Kentucky Department for Public Health has agreed on a year-long, $18,000 contract with This is Quitting, a nationwide cessation text service aimed at helping young people, ages 13 to 24, to stop using e-cigarettes.
The program, designed with input from young people who’ve repeatedly attempted to quit vaping, provides up to nine weeks of coaching via text, according to a Thursday news release from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Anyone wanting to participate should text KENTUCKY to 88709 to enroll. Once enrolled, users will receive an interactive text each day leading up to the day they quit, and support texts for another 60 days after.
The messages will be tailored, based on a user’s response, and questions will be asked: “Last question for today: how confident do you feel about quitting? Reply totally, so-so, or meh,” one text read.
“Pro-tip, you’re gonna to want to get rid of your JUUL to do this thing. Give it away, sell it, throw it in a dumpster fire, you do you. Make a plan right now for how you’re going to get your JUUL out of your life,” another read.
For anyone considering but not quite set on quitting, “This is Quitting” will send at least four weeks’ of confidence-building texts to help prepare for quitting. Enrollees can also get on-demand support for stress, cravings and setbacks, according to the release.
Unlike with older, tobacco cigarette smokers, young adults who vape might want to quit, “but they don’t know how,” said Dr. Amanda Graham, chief of innovations for Truth Initiative, a nonprofit tobacco control organization that runs “This is Quitting.”
This program allows its young users to access support “discreetly and anonymously without having to disclose to an adult that they’re vaping,” she said.
Kentucky, like most states in recent years, has seen skyrocketing rates of teen vaping. E-cigarettes surpassed alcohol as the most used substance among teenagers, according to a Kentucky Incentives for Prevention survey.
Vaping rates among middle and high schoolers doubled between 2016 and 2018, with rates among sophomores jumping almost 70 percent. Overall, 54 percent of the state’s students used a vaping product in 2019, data from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey show. More than half of those students currently vape.
Some Kentucky school districts have said vaping is its single biggest problem. Bullitt County was the first district in Kentucky to file a lawsuit against JUUL Labs, Inc., the largest manufacturer and retailer of e-cigarettes. Health experts in Kentucky expect the recently enacted federal law raising the minimum tobacco-buying age from 18 to 21 will help with this effort.
“This is Quitting” is Kentucky’s third free concurrent cessation program. The other two — Quit Now Kentucky and My Life, My Quit — target different demographics, said Elizabeth Anderson-Hoagland, health promotion section supervisor for the department.
“My Life, My Quit,” which launched this fall, is a collaboration between the Cabinet and National Jewish Health. It targets teenagers 17 and under.
“Quit Now Kentucky,” a state-run program, is used mostly by middle-aged and older adults who smoke traditional tobacco cigarettes. Since it launched 15 years ago, roughly 150,000 sought out the service, Anderson-Hoagland said. In 2019, alone, roughly 9,400 people called the hot line, mostly between the ages of 45 and 65.
Physiologically, teens and young adults’ brains and bodies respond differently to quitting a substance like nicotine than a traditional middle-aged adult tobacco smoker, Anderson-Hoagland said.
“They might not have been using nicotine as long as a 65-year-old, but they are still working with a teenage brain,” she said. “That frontal lobe doesn’t develop until age 25,” which affects long-term decision-making skills and impulsivity.
Part of the state’s contract with “This is Quitting” allows for the collection of data to determine its efficacy. If it’s not successful, then the department likely won’t keep the service.
“If it’s not effective, then no, we wouldn’t continue, but we do want to give it a fair shot,” Anderson-Hoagland said. “There’s an incredibly high need, [and] we feel pretty comfortable that this is something teens want.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 3:50 PM.
