Vaping cessation support recommendations from adolescents who vape: a qualitative study

Youth vaping is a serious public health concern, being more prevalent than any other tobacco use. To inform cessation interventions, we explored what adolescents perceive as their reasons for quitting and strategies to help them quit.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 11 adolescents reporting vaping in the past 90 days and recruited from a high school in Massachusetts. Interviews were transcribed and dual-coded. Inductive thematic analysis was employed, and thematic summaries were prepared.

Reasons adolescents reported for quitting included cost, experiencing "nic-sick" from nicotine withdrawal or excess intake, negative impacts on mood, concentration, or health, and experiencing symptoms of nicotine dependence. Nearly all tried to quit multiple times. Barriers to quitting included exposure to vaping, access to vape products, stress, and "cool" new products or flavors. Quit strategies included avoiding others vaping, seeking social support to quit, addressing peer pressure to continue vaping, learning successful quit strategies from peers, and using distraction strategies or alternatives to vaping.

Many adolescents who vape want to quit, and most have tried multiple times. Interventions need to engage adolescents with varying reasons to quit, barriers, and quit strategy preferences.

This study is registered through ClinicalTrials.gov. The trial registration number is NCT05140915. The trial registration date is 11/18/2021.