Childhood vaping is so prevalent that schools across America are beginning to install vapor detectors in bathrooms.
An estimated 2.6 million high school students smoke, and teachers say students in recent years have taken to carrying devices in their sleeves to vape discreetly in class, causing distraction and secondary effects in nearby children has led.
And teachers are increasingly saying their students have become so addicted that they feel the need to skip class to get their nicotine hit in the bathroom.
Maine’s Lewiston school system — one of the largest in the state with more than 5,100 students — has become the latest company to announce plans to install the detectors in restrooms.
The detectors have been deployed in several other state counties, including New Jersey, Texas and Illinois, with great success.
E-cigarette detectors in schools would detect vapor trails in bathrooms and send time-stamped alerts to school administrators for action if the student exits the bathroom. They have been used successfully in several states including New Jersey, Texas and Illinois
More than 2.5 million children in the US are using e-cigarettes – an increase of half a million from last year and a reversal of the downward trend of recent years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 2.55 million Americans in middle or high school admit to using the device in the past 30 days. That’s a jump of 500,000, or 24 percent, from 2021. It’s the first increase since the CDC began collecting annual data in 2019
Lewiston officials are reviewing a bill likely to exceed $100,000, a sum not included in their budget and having to be funded largely from grants.
By the end of 2022, about 2.5 million middle and high school students were addicted to e-cigarettes, an increase of 500,000 or 24 percent from 2021. It’s the first increase since 2019.
The vast majority of children (85 percent) use flavored e-cigarettes, which federal regulators have cracked down on in recent years over concerns that they are being marketed to children.
Still, due to mild enforcement in retail outlets, teens often have the opportunity to get their hands on flavored e-cigarettes, mostly single-use devices filled with high concentrations of highly addictive nicotine.
The vape detectors aren’t a closed deal, as Lewiston schools officials still have to raise a sizable sum to buy them and install them in the toilets, which are clogged and overflowing due to the steady stream of wheezing kids using e-cigarettes in stands.
The principal has his eye on a device that connects to the high school’s current security system.
If vaping is detected, an alarm will go off and nearby video cameras will time-stamp their recordings, allowing administrators to identify students who have been in the restroom during that time.
A Lewiston district manager, Jonathan Radtke, said: “We will continue to staff patrol the toilets as best we can, but we cannot station someone on every toilet at all times.”
Long waits for the toilet are just one of the reasons school administrators install vape detectors. James Stemple, Executive Director of Constituent Services at Stafford County Public Schools in Texas and a former principal, told an NBC affiliate that student vaping in schools is one of the biggest problems he’s seen in education in more than two decades have.
Mr. Stemple said: It’s an addiction problem. “Kids have to leave class to vape, otherwise we’ve had kids in class trying to vape in class.”
The CDC report found that a large majority, nearly 85 percent, of teenage e-cigarette users report using flavored nicotine products. The FDA is cracking down on flavored tobacco products to reduce smoking rates among US youth
The CDC found that more than one in four teen users reported using their e-cigarette every day, and another 40 percent had used it for at least 20 of the last 30 days
In New Jersey, 10 school districts have installed detectors, many of which also capture fumes produced by devices containing THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. And several school systems in the Chicago suburbs, such as Hinsdale South High Schools and Evanston Township High School, have installed such devices.
In Ohio, the Revere Local School District has installed 16 vape detectors at Revere High School and Revere Middle School since 2019. Deputy Principal Doug Faris said earlier this year that the devices have helped prevent e-cigarettes in bathrooms, though they’re not foolproof.
Mr Faris said: “You can see the e-cigarette detector going off maybe twenty times a day.” That doesn’t mean there are twenty kids vaping. The e-cigarette detector detects changes in the air quality in the bathroom. So if you go outside, take out a body spray and spritz it on, it’ll kick off. It’s hard for us to say exactly, but it helps.
“Sometimes it’s frustrating because you’re downstairs in the cafeteria and it starts in the A wing and you’re like, ‘If I get down there, they’ll be gone.’ It’s difficult, but it helps.
“Today I got two, and I actually stood right next to this toilet and was able to go to the toilet in a few seconds.”
According to a 2022 CDC survey, an estimated 14 percent of high school students and 3 percent of middle school students use the devices regularly.
The report also found that 85 percent of those who reported using the devices regularly used flavored e-cigarette flavors.
Of the users, 28 percent said they puffed on their e-cigarettes every day. Just over 40 percent said they had used it at least 20 times or more in the past 30 days.