What Is the Role of Imagined Futures in the Development of E-Cigarette Use among Young People?

Abstract

Public health ‘gateway’ narratives concerning young people’s e-cigarette use warn against a future generation beset by escalating addiction and a possible epidemic of tobacco- and vaping-related illnesses. We argue that such imaginaries of vaping futures are in fact based in smoking pasts, which, while likely not ‘real’ in the sense of predicting the development of youth vaping, have real consequences through influencing the conditions of young people’s e-cigarette use. Drawing on a study of 14–18-year-old vapers, we consider how the future imaginaries of gateway thinking – characterised by escalating dependence – both oppose and intersect with a cultural stock of neo-liberal future imaginaries – marked by progressive independence and self-determination. We show how both sets of imaginaries are negotiated and entangled within the logics and practices of young vapers’ ‘futures-in-process’ to advance debates in the sociology of futures and offer a radical rethinking of substance use by youth.