ABSTRACT
Concerns about the popularity of vaping nicotine among young people have garnered much attention in recent years; yet, young people’s own accounts of the embodied experiences and intoxicating effects of consuming nicotine-via-vape are curiously absent from the burgeoning literature on vaping – perhaps a reflection that nicotine is rarely considered an intoxicant, despite being a mind-altering drug. In this chapter, we use a practice theory lens to explore vaping nicotine as an intoxicating social practice, and offer insights into why young people are drawn to vaping in the first place and what encourages or discourages them to sustain or change their vaping practices. Drawing together two qualitative datasets generated in California in 2016 and 2017 with young adults who vape (most of whom smoked cigarettes before trying vaping), we explore interconnections between the material products, forms of knowledge and skill, and social meanings that constituted vaping as a social practice in this specific socio-historical context, prior to the proliferation of pod-based vaping systems. Cross-cutting themes include vaping nicotine as a form of functional intoxication to cope with everyday stress; learning to control and calibrate nicotine intoxication from vaping; and building and navigating social connections and communities through vaping. As anti-vaping sentiment appears to intensify within mainstream public health discourse within the USA, we conclude by querying the unintended consequences for young people who vape nicotine in order to reduce or avoid the tobacco-related harms of smoking.
