Table 4:

Theme: Existing tobacco control policies don’t work for vaping.

Theme	Representative Quotes
E-cigarettes are easy to conceal	‘People [Airmen] will do it in the bathroom during the duty day. People [Airmen] will do it in classrooms during the duty day. It's easy.’ (Airman) ‘Have a stealth [concealable e-cigarette] on me usually, all the time.’ (Airman) ‘Yeah, you can put it in here and then you just [demonstrates using an e-cigarette from a device without removing it from their pocket]…’ (Airman)
E-cigarettes are easy to use in your room	‘You're only supposed to do it in the designated smoke area, but people vape [use e-cigarettes] in their rooms all the time.’ (Airman) “Sometimes, I forget. I do it so often, I'll forget when my door's open [to my dorm room] that I'm not supposed to be doing it.” (Airman) ‘Even if you go to the smoke pit with your e-cig, you're still probably using it in your room when you're not at the smoke pit.’ (Airman) ‘I don't even think about going to the smoke area. It's literally smoking for five seconds.’ (Airman)
Designated tobacco use areas are not attractive to e-cigarette users	‘I hate going to the smoke pit [designated tobacco use area] because they're sitting out there smoking cigarettes’. (Airman) ‘It’s easier to get my nicotine buzz from something [e-cigarette] up in my room.’ (Airman) ‘You go up there [designated tobacco use area] and have this guy puffing banana flavored mist this way, and cigarette smoke that way’ (Airman). ‘It seems like a big to-do to go and leave your room.’ (Airman) ‘Why would I sit outside and smell up my breath and my clothes if I can just get twice the nicotine and more of the buzz just chilling in my room?’ (Airman)
Difficult to enforce current e-cigarette policies	‘Not everyone [i.e., potential rule enforcers] knows what it looks like or what it smells like.’ (Airman) ‘It won't turn on if you don't have the pod in. You can just be like, "Yeah, I have this but there's no contraband in it."’ (Airman) ‘Nobody gets caught.’ (Airman) ‘Yeah, and like I said, unless you catch them actually doing it, with a vape [e-cigarette], it's hard to [prove it]… you have to prove it.’ (MTL)

Note: MTL: Military Training Leader; TTI: Technical Training Instructor.