Welcome to Chasing Life.

You know, one day about six years ago, I sat down for a conversation with all three of my daughters.

I wanted to talk to them about something that was weighing on my mind

and the minds of just about every parent I knew at the time, vaping.

What did you think was in these vapes, O'A?

I thought it's just a lot of chemicals, and some chemicals can, like, damage you.

Are you comfortable with this conversation?

No.

Why not?

Because I'm only 10.

At the time, my youngest, who you just heard from, Soleil, she wasn't even a teenager yet.

But I wanted her to be part of the conversation anyway, because the numbers back then,

and also what her big sister, 14-year-old Sage, already gone through, suggested to me that

vaping was probably something she was going to run into in middle school.

How would you describe the vaping situation in your school?

It got kind of bad last year.

Some people did it too much, like a lot too much.

In 2019, the CDC found that 27.5% of high school kids admitted to vaping. It's more than a quarter.

And that's the ones who actually admitted to it. But here's the thing. By 2024, just five years later,

that number had dropped to 7.8%, the lowest in a decade. Before Solay could even get her driver's license,

it looked like vaping was already on the way out, and it seemed like the same tools and

lessons that had driven down teen cigarette smoking were also successfully beating back this new

...