In today’s edition of the Tribune, there’s an article about the struggles local law enforcement face when trying to determine if people younger than 18 years old are vaping with e-cigarettes containing nicotine, or if it’s the “harmless” nicotine-free variety.

I’d like to focus on a related struggle — breaking a habit that’s formed as a teenager.

Like many people, I assumed all e-cigarettes and vaping paraphernalia were only available for people older than 18, so this all came as a surprise.

It doesn’t surprise me that kids are doing it. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a teenager, and really wanted to be seen as older and tougher than I actually was at the time. 

So, like many geniuses in the chutes, I started chewing. I couldn’t get the real stuff when I was younger, so I’d buy the jerky chew or the fake mint snuff that’s basically just ground up mint leaves.

Like nicotine-free vaping, it looked like the real deal, and that was fine — at first.

Not wanting to look like a wimp, I started chewing for real when I was 16 and had friends old enough to buy it for me.

Over time, it went from just doing it while goofing off with friends to doing it while studying too. After all, it improved my focus, so no harm, right?

Like most decisions made in my teen years, I was wrong.

Chewing while studying and socializing expanded into chewing when I was driving, and then after meals and before bed. It ultimately turned into doing it whenever I felt like it — which was all the time.

Like vaping, I didn’t see much harm in what I was doing, since I could easily check my mouth for any signs of cancer. So far anyway, the harm hasn’t been physical — it’s been financial.

Fast-forward 12 years and approximately 4,380 cans of Copenhagen later, and I’m short about $22,000 that I would have had, had I not picked up a habit that costs 5 bucks a day.

Despite what my wormy 16-year-old mind thought, it didn’t up my rodeo rankings or do much of anything beyond make me want more of it.

Honestly, it’s a love-hate relationship at this point, since it hasn’t impacted my health — yet.

Obviously, I don’t want to shell out $35 every week at the gas station, but everything from rodeos to writing is so tied to the habit that quitting is far from landing on my to-do list.

Back to the vaping issue, the habits formed when you’re forming who you are become nearly impossible to break. Yeah, the nicotine-free e-cigs probably aren’t addictive, but it’s pretty similar to my experience of pretending to chew with the fake snuff and then transitioning into actually chewing.

Like vaping, there was no way to tell the difference between the mint leaves and the tobacco leaves — which made enforcing school rules and the law pretty much impossible.

This is the position local law enforcement is facing now. Is there nicotine in the vapor? The difference is difficult to determine, which makes enforcing the law impossible.

Banning the sale of all vaping and e-cigarettes from minors is a good first step toward stopping bad habits before they start.

Plus, I’m betting most of our local kids can think of better ways to spend $22,000.