Vaping as Captured Homeostasis - Adverse Events, Trauma Response, and the Case for Stewardship in Australian Youth Nicotine Policy

ABSTRACTVaping in Australia expanded at a rate disproportionate to peer nations between 2020 and 2023,peaking at 9.1% of all Australians aged 14+ years before regulatory intervention produced a partialcorrection in 2024. The dominant policy discourse has framed this trajectory as a product-accessand advertising failure amenable to supply-side restriction. This paper argues that framing isnecessary but insufficient. Drawing on the Ecological Homeostasis (EH) framework, the GeneralTheory of Regulated Stability (GTRS), and the HATI² evaluation protocol (Smith, 2026a; 2026b;2026c; 2026d), we propose that vaping uptake — particularly in vulnerable Australian youthcohorts — is best understood as a Captured Regulatory System: a homeostatic response tounresolved adverse event load in which the regulatory machinery of the stress-response system isco-opted by an exogenous chemical agent that simultaneously provides apparent short-term reliefand compounds long-term dysregulation.Four theoretical layers are developed. Layer 0 identifies pre-existing homeostatic vulnerability —constituted by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), disenfranchisement, and the COVID-19pandemic as a mass, multi-domain adverse event — as the precondition for susceptibility toregulatory capture. Layer 1 maps the neurobiological mechanism by which nicotine hijacks theCraving Inhibition System, producing allostatic rather than homeostatic adaptation. Layer 2analyses the social-ecological dimension: industry-engineered normalisation, peer-groupdynamics, and the amplification of vulnerability in identifiable Australian sub-populations. Layer 3 Vaping as Captured Homeostasisapplies the EH regulatory intervention framework to evaluate current Australian policy, finding thatpunitive responses — school suspension, criminal enforcement — constitute second-orderperturbations that compound the original adverse event load through shame, social isolation, andloss of the peer regulatory environment. Stewardship-based alternatives are proposed, consistentwith the harm reduction evidence base and EH theory. The paper is Australian-primary in evidence base, with supplementary reference to UK, NewZealand, Canadian, and Irish data where cross-jurisdictional comparison illuminates the Australianpicture. A HATI² self-assessment (v1.0) and preregistered open problems are included. The paperis intended as a contribution to the National Tobacco Strategy 2023–2030 evidence base and as aresource for the Australian Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DoHDA), the TherapeuticGoods Administration (TGA), and state education authorities. Keywords: vaping, e-cigarettes, Ecological Homeostasis, adverse childhood experiences, traumaresponse, nicotine addiction, allostasis, youth policy, stewardship, harm reduction, Australia