The issue of vaping is one of the most common behaviors among youths in the United States. According to the Foods and Drugs Administration (FDA), at least one in ten middle and high school, as well as college students, use e-cigarettes daily. This represents more than 2.5 million students who are addicted to this drug (Martheswaran et al., 2021). Most of the current users, approximately 85% of them, prefer the use of flavored e-cigarettes. Those with fruit flavors are the most common, followed by other flavors such as desserts, candy or other sweets. The most common device used for vaping is disposables, common among 55.3% of all the users followed by refillable pods, common among 25.2% of the users (Dinardo and Rome, 2019). This is becoming a huge problem not only for these users but other people who are either passive users or those who are related to the users. For instance, most of these users have been reported to have issues such as asthma and other lung conditions such as scarring and organ damage, among other health challenges. These individuals have also been affected by other behavioral problems, such as increased addiction to drugs and shifting to cigarette smoking, among other problems. Most of the affected students drop out of school because it becomes hard for them to concentrate in class, and some have to go into rehabilitation or healthcare facilities due to the health complications they develop from vaping.

During my senior year in high school, there was a surge of increase in vaping among my peers and me. We had developed this as a habit out of pleasure, but things were slowly getting out of hand, and we were starting to feel the negative impacts of the habit. For instance, some of my peers were starting to drop out of school majorly because they found it hard to concentrate on their studies. Our performance in the class had started deteriorating, and we were slowly attracting the attention of our teachers. In addition to the poor performances in class and in our two exams, some of us started having changes in our behaviors. Most of my peers were always late to school, and most of them started becoming untidy. In other instances, others started becoming hostile to their classmates, and at least one case of conflict was reported in school among my peers who were addicted to vaping. We also stopped participating in school activities such as soccer because we were always trying to look for the perfect opportunity to vape (Keane et al., 2017). Our relationship with the teachers and our parents was affected because we tried as much as possible to avoid them. In extreme cases, some of my friends involved in the habit developed health complications and had to be admitted into healthcare facilities. Others were forced to rehabilitation centers by the teachers once they were busted in the process of vaping. For some of us who had been brought up in religious homes, we stopped attending churches and spent most of our time vaping. Things were getting out of hand, and we needed a solution to the problem before it turned into an endemic, which could not be solved easily.

Though everyone has the freedom to make their own choices, I felt a need to try and persuade my peers and myself to minimize this habit. This was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make because my peers saw this as a joke to them. Most of these peers were deep into the habit, and they never had the hopes of minimizing or stopping the habit. However, we realized that this was all mental, and for us to stop the habit, it had to be from our choices. Doing this allowed the process to become much easier. Therefore, I initiated a challenge that was more of a competition to see who would prevail under the spell of nicotine to persuade those around me to stop vaping. Though the challenge was unsuccessful, it allowed us to see the difference it made when we abstained from vaping.

This is a narrative about my life and that of my peers, which I hope will greatly impact other people with similar problems. The audience of my multimedia rhetorical narrative will be college 3 students, people who are addicted to vaping and other people who may have an interest in this issue. My audience would also be part of a high school community, those living on a college campus and those who are already experiencing the problem in the real world. My audience will be people who are highly interested in the topic, those who value quitting or learning the various ways to help those around them quit this problem. They are people who value health and well-being. They should be people who are making informed decisions on vaping. To communicate my ideas and rhetoric, a short film will be created.

Video projects enable an infinite creative potential providing visual stimulus in joint efforts with sound, narration and an easy-to-follow storyline. Videos are easy to spread nowadays and easier for the audience to ingest hence the choice to communicate my ideas on vaping. The fact that my audience is made up of young people and those who rely heavily on social media means that the use of videos is the best choice to inform them about the topic. A video is much more exciting to use than other methods because my audience can see who is narrating the story, and they can put a face to the voice. Resources such as personal experiences, interviews and visual stimuli will be used to gather more information about the topic. Some of the major constraints that are likely to be experienced in the process include time consumption, retaining the attention of the audience and maintaining consistency to ensure that the audience gets to understand all that is needed about the topic. I plan on using text, visuals and sound to stimulate the audience's mind and get them thinking about the whole topic (Selekman, 2019). I will also ensure that I interact with the audience in the process of my presentation as a way of enhancing their concentration on the topic that I will be presenting. I also plan on asking rhetorical questions to them at the end of my presentation and giving them some time to think about the questions. Reflective notes at the end will also enhance their understanding of the topic I present to them.

Dinardo, P., & Rome, E. S. (2019). Vaping: The new wave of nicotine addiction. Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine, 86(12), 789-798.

Keane, H., Weier, M., Fraser, D., & Gartner, C. (2017). ‘Anytime, anywhere’: vaping as social practice. Critical Public Health, 27(4), 465-476.

Martheswaran, T., Shmunes, M. H., Ronquillo, Y. C., & Moshirfar, M. (2021). The impact of vaping on ocular health: A literature review. International Ophthalmology, 41(8), 2925- 2932.

O’Connor, S., Pelletier, H., Bayoumy, D., & Schwartz, R. (2019). Interventions to prevent harms from Vaping. Toronto ON: Ontario Tobacco Research Unit.

Selekman, J. (2019). Vaping: It's All a Smokescreen. Pediatric Nursing, 45(1).