Vape nation as defined by Urban Dictionary is “a nation dedicated to the homies who set out to rip the fattest vape cloud possible. They’re experts in the art of vape tricks, spreading the word and blazing it hard.” This term came to be when the tobacco industry realized that smoking cigarettes was seen by the younger generation as not cool and gross, leading to a need to develop a new product. After many years of protesters fighting against tobacco companies, the large majority of Americans, especially teens, think that smoking is gross, not cool and unhealthy. Since the tobacco industry started to lose a lot of users including potential users like teens, revenues and costs for cigarettes had to be increased resulting in the loss of a lot of money. Then one day, the electronic vape came to the market that changed everything. The vape was invented by Hon Lik in 2003 but it was not that popular or well known. Then as the tobacco industries became desperate to revive their company to the glory days they decided to hire Hon Lik to help create and mass produce new better electronic cigarettes. Slowly but surely vapes became more popular until in 2014 they exploded with popularity. It all started with a commercial about how these new electronic cigarettes can help people reduce smoking and eventually quit, which got the attention of adults and especially teens. Teenagers nowadays love anything that is technologically cool and this definitely did the job. Soon teenagers throughout the country started buying e-cigarettes that soon turned to vapes. Since the popularity of vapes/e-cigarettes was growing tremendously it allowed the prices to drop, giving the tobacco industry more money. After the explosion, there were little to few commercial advertising e-cigarettes/vapes allowing for someone to quit smoking, making it appear that the tobacco industry developed an elaborate plan to get young adults hooked on tobacco again, but through a different method. It worked.

Since the e-cigarette/vaping epidemic, about 20% of high school students admit to owning a vape which is a lot considering the industry just started about four years ago. BV West has also been affected. At first, it was the upperclassmen who had vapes simply because they were old enough to purchase them at age 18. Unfortunately, since the popularity of vapes has grown many freshmen may have complete, easy access to vapes. This is a problem because freshmen and other high school students should not be exposed to being able to readily get vapes. The tobacco industry basically attacked the younger generation in hopes of making kids addicted to tobacco, in result giving them a profit and turning people to smoking on a daily basis. This is completely immoral and unethical but the tobacco companies are businesses and they need money to survive even if it means destroying lives and causing people to become dependent on their product. The tobacco industry is truly at fault for targeting young adults to get them hooked on tobacco.