We Are All Bullied
A German American research paper links being a victim of bullying to the use of electronic cigarettes
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by Dave Cross
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Lead author Reiner Hanewinkel has spent many years working on preventing bullying in German schools and has produced a number of studies addressing the issue(1). He is also one of the two authors of the “I’m Not Scared” project(2).
In “Association between bullying victimization and e‐cigarette use among German students”(3), authors Hansen, Morgenstern, Isensee, Galimov and Hanewinkel explain that they define bullying as being both physical, verbal, facial, obscene gestures, group exclusion and/or psychological abuse. They also include cyberbullying through email, text, social media posts and gaming chatrooms.
In total, 45.8% of subject reported being bullied which broke down as 46.5% of boys and 45.3% of girls. They stated that this is a huge concern to parents, teachers, mental health practitioners and – most importantly – the students themselves.
The team point to previous studies showing a relationship between being bullied and substance use. Data from 80,000 American students highlighted victims and the use of smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and marijuana use. They list a number of possible reasons for the link from self-medicating to susceptibility to peer-pressure.
Unfortunately, they held too much store in exaggerated tales of the “teen vaping epidemic” in America, and also speak of the EVALI lung disease outbreak as though it had anything to do with vaping. In addition, they disregarded the findings of one study that found ecig use “lost significance…when cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, or cannabis use were considered in the models.”
From 16,476 German students, “we found a dose–response relationship between bullying victimization and e-cigarette use. The odds of the past month e-cigarette used increased linearly with the increased frequency of bullying victimization.
“Our study indicates that the association between bullying victimization and e-cigarette use holds even after controlling for a number of factors known to be associated with youth substance use.”
American Vaping Association’s Greg Conley recently highlighted an example of tobacco controllers bullying vapers with a new ad campaign displaying a vaper being bullied by her classmates(4). It comes from a website that is run by the City of Jacksonville, which also claims vapers suffer from diarrhoea, bloating, nausea and anxiety(5). The campaign also runs ridiculous Facebook(6) and Instagram(7) pages
References:
- Prevention of bulling in German schools - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-22320-005
- I’m Not S cared - https://iamnotscared.pixel-online.org/
- Association between bullying victimization and e‐cigarette use among German students - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ab.21951
- Tweet by Greg Conley - https://twitter.com/GregTHR/status/1352276009870102528
- Vaping Gets Ugly - https://www.coj.net/teen-vaping
- Vaping Gets Ugly on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vapinggetsugly
- Vaping Gets Ugly on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vapinggetsugly/
Photo Credit:
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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