Several Deaths With Vaping-Related Lung Injuries In Texas

welcome back several deaths and more

than 130 victims with baby related lung

injuries in Texas now the Texas PTA and

the American Heart Association are

teaming up and they hope to put a stop

to the teen vaping crisis here to talk

about this is Texas PTA president sherry

das thank you so much for being here

Thank You sherry at the Texas Capitol

today you held straight talk a matter of

life and breath could you explain your

call to action and what's needed yes we

put out a call of action to all of our

volunteers across the state as well as

our over half a million members that we

have and wanted to partner with school

administrators and physicians and

students who've actually done vaping and

suffered some of the consequences the

begin talking about the topic of teen

vaping we have an epidemic going on and

we need to start the conversations that

will healthy lead to actions of

extinguishing team vaping this

discussion just took place a couple of

hours ago

where was the biggest cry for help did

it come from parents teachers what

stories did you hear let's say the

biggest cry from help came from the

parents and then with the school

administrators right behind them you

know parents are really not well

educated as to the dangers of vaping the

real dangers of vaping and the school

administrators are having to manage this

on their campuses and so parents just

don't know how to talk to their teens

about vaping they don't they aren't

aware of the different devices that are

available and they're just hiding in

plain sight you know we learned today

that some of the vaping devices are pens

or toothpicks or USBs and parents just

you know walk right by them and don't

realize that their own team is actually

vaping so parents really want to learn

about it and then find out figure out

how to how to talk to their children

about vaping with hopes of having them

to stop Jerry the American Heart

Association rolled out the end the lies

Youth vaping and nicotine of research

initiative with initial funding of a

total of twenty million dollars what

projects do you know of are in the works

right now

well of course today was our first time

collaborating with the American Heart

Association on team

and we're absolutely looking forward to

continuing that relationship we've

actually already talked about having

more talks and more discussions and

supporting each other as we both work to

extinguish teen vaping yeah something

big about this is that this initiative

also looks into changing laws and

policies how soon do you think I'll be

able to make that impact well the

legislative session is on the rise but

right now in an interim we are busy

educating everyone and take another look

at the laws that we have the laws we

have right now are certainly not

comprehensive enough and we really want

them to disband all the flavors and

certainly the ones that the teens find

appealing but just ban all of them

altogether and right now that's not

what's happening and so we'll certainly

be looking into pursuing legislation to

cover all of that and then teens

hopefully won't have access to it or

even appeal to those flavors that are

available now all right well we're out

of time sherry Doss thank you so much

for coming in we appreciate it thank you