‘Vaping killed my daughter’: Mum’s plea after teenager’s death

A mother who is convinced her daughter died from vaping just three days before her 19th birthday says more needs to be done to discourage young people from vaping.
Rosey Christoffersen, 18, was an occasional smoker, but wanted to give up so began vaping instead.
But in February 2015, just seven months after she began using e-cigarettes, she died after suffering a collapsed lung and cardiac arrest.
Rosey’s mother Rachel Howe believes her daughter’s heavy vaping habit is what killed her.
She said: “Her lungs were full of holes. Thousands and thousands of these blebs and the doctor who looked at her lungs said her lungs looked like mush and like they had been in a chemical incident.
“That was the only other time he had seen this type of damage to the lungs.”
Rachel said her daughter Rosey “constantly” had a vape in her mouth.
“She would go to the toilet and she would have her vape in her hand”, Rachel said. “I think because the smoking ban had come in but you could vape everywhere, so she was vaping everywhere she couldn’t smoke.”
Rosey’s mum continued: “She [Rosey] said Vaping was all the things she loved about smoking and none of the things she hated.
“So there was no bad smell, there were no yellow fingers, there was no smell in her clothes or in her hair and it tasted lovely.
“That was her main thing the flavours and she was quite obsessed with trying different flavours and she was addicted to the very sweet ones.”
Mum Rachel Howe describes what the doctors found after Rosey died.
Scientists estimate the number of adults in England to have started vaping despite never having been regular smokers has reached one million.
This is a sharp increase on 2020, with disposable vapes having been available since 2021.
The rise is driven mostly by young adults – with about one out of every seven 18-24-year-olds who never regularly smoked now using e-cigarettes.
Using e-cigarettes or vapes is nowhere near as harmful as smoking cigarettes.
However, health experts agree anyone who does not smoke should not start vaping and more research is needed to fully understand the health effects of e-cigarettes.
There are more vape shops in the North West than anywhere else in England and the region has the most teenage vapers.Blackburn has been named the vaping capital of the UK as it has the most vaping shops per head with nearly 22.56 e-cigarette shops per 100,000 people.
In January 2024, the government announced that disposable vapes will be banned in England due to their appeal to young people.
However, Rachel thinks the ban on single-use vapes is not going to be enough to discourage young people from vaping.”It’s a start but I don’t think it’s enough,” she said. “I think vape shops should be regulated and licensed and I think vape products should be treated like tobacco products.
“There should be no flavourings, no bright packaging and they shouldn’t be on show. They should be behind closed cabinets.”
Current NHS guidance is that vaping is much less harmful than smoking and one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking.
But the initial findings of a research team looking at the long term effects of vaping are concerning.Dr Maxime Boidin, a Senior Lecturer in Cardiac Rehab at Manchester Metropolitan University said: “Our current results are that vapers and smokers have a similar impaired vascular health compared to control.”
Dr Boidin added: “Flavour is one of the substances that is inside a vape as well as nicotine and menthol and so on, so flavour increases inflammation and inflammation is one of the mechanisms that leads to a damage of the blood vessels which can lead to any cardiovascular complication in the future. So not only the nicotine, everything inside a vape can be harmful.
Manchester based business Supreme PLC are the biggest manufacturer of e-liquids in the whole country.
It has its own brand of disposable vapes and e-liquids – making around 350 different varieties and can produce 1.2 million e-liquids every single day and in the last financial year, they doubled their profits to £30million.A third of their sales were from disposable vapes driven by a deal to distribute some big name brands into shops and major supermarkets.
But the company insists it’s “not concerned” about a potential future ban on disposable vapes.
Mike Holliday, Vaping Divisional Lead at Supreme PLC says he is confident vaping is less harmful than smoking
Mike Holliday, Vaping Divisional Lead at Supreme PLC said: “The industry will always innovate, the industry will always find the next thing, so in terms of how detrimental it may be to business I think things will just evolve and move on.
“Do I think that the disposable ban will combat what they are looking for? No I don’t.
“I actually think it will just create a bigger black market for products out there.”The firm says its throwing its full backing behind measures to combat under-age vaping and have already simplified packaging on their own brand products and opted for “age-appropriate” flavour names.Mike also thinks there “absolutely” needs to be more regulation in the industry.
He said: “We have rules and regulations now. The rules are you cant sell products to an under 18 but it’s not been regulated.
“You have to have your product vetted by the medical regulatory authority now- illicit products are getting through every day, its nearly a billion pound industry of illicit e-cigarettes in the UK.
“They’re not regulated because they’ve not been through the legislation that companies like ourselves and so many others do, so actually enforcing the regulation is half the battle.”He added: “I am confident that [vaping] it is less harmful than the alternative which is smoking.”As we’ve said before. If you don’t smoke, don’t vape. That’s absolutely our advice and what a doctor would tell you but public choice has got to be public choice.”
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