It Started With a Conversation

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VapeTrace started with one of those rare conversations between a mom and her teenage son that you wish you could freeze in time.

My son, Timothy, and I were talking about everything, school, sports, the future, when he casually mentioned something that stopped me cold: how many of his classmates were vaping nicotine.

I was horrified. “Why?” I asked.

“Because they think it’s cool,” he said.

Then he added, almost as an afterthought: “But it won’t be cool when they can’t even run one lap around the track in a year because of the damage they’ve done to their lungs from vaping.”

As a mom, that terrified me. I asked, “Don’t their parents know?”

Timothy explained that most of them probably don’t. Vaping is often odorless and easy to hide.  I asked if the school tests students for vaping.

Timothy answered, “No. I don’t think there’s even a test for vaping.”

We went straight to the computer to find out. What we discovered was a gap big enough to drive a truck through: there were tests for nicotine, and there were blood tests, but nothing designed specifically to detect vaping. Nothing simple, affordable, and focused on the unique toxic compounds found in vape products.

Right then, we decided.  We would invent a test that could detect not just vaping nicotine, but also THC and exposure to the harmful chemicals in vape products.

That is how VapeTrace was born.

Suzanne Reed              Timothy Reed