France debates vaping: How best to separate teens from their ‘puffs’?
It’s nearly the end of lunch break and high school friends Candice, Kenza, and Jade sit cross-legged on the concrete courtyard next to a local grocery store in the east of Paris. Huddled on the sidewalk behind them are other small groups of teens.
Almost all have two things in hand: a cellphone and a disposable electronic cigarette, known in France as a puff. Most are colorful plastic canisters; one is white with flashing red and blue lights.
“Puffs don’t make your hands and clothes stink like cigarettes,” says Kenza, pulling a violet puff from her front sweatshirt pocket and taking a drag, as a plume of berry-scented smoke fills the space above her head. She withheld her last name because she is a minor. “You don’t have to go to a tobacco shop to
