When you walk into a bathroom at my school, it’s hard not to catch a student vaping, or smell the nauseating vapor. Vaping is prohibited at my school, of course–but in the bathrooms, there are no cameras. I don’t vape, but when I ask my friends why they do it, most of the time I get one of three answers: because they claim it relieves stress, because their older sibling vapes, or because everyone around them vapes. And while you need to be twenty-one years old to buy a vape, most smoke shops, at least where I go to school in New York City, will sell them to high schoolers at a higher price in exchange for not carding them.
At this point, high school vaping is an all-out epidemic. That’s despite the science being pretty clear: it worsens cardiovascular health, weakens the respiratory system, and negatively impacts mental health. And yet I think schools aren’t doing enough to protect students from vaping. If we don’t come up with a more effective way to keep vapes out of schools and help students wean off their nicotine addiction, there will be severe health consequences for people of my generation down the line.
E-cigarettes were first patented in 2003, and came to the U.S. market in 2007. Instead of burning tobacco leaves, e-cigarettes (vapes), involve inhaling heated liquid nicotine to simulate the feeling of smoking. Originally, they were pitched as a device to help people quit smoking, a lower-risk tobacco alternative that still provided that “buzzed” feeling. What most people don’t know, however, is that vapes often also contain nickel, tin, lead, acrolein, and formaldehyde.
Inhaling lead from a vape can cause neurological damage, while heated-up acrolein and formaldehyde are cancer causing. Since vapes are relatively new, there has been no long-term evidence to differentially prove vaping causes lung cancer, but some of the chemicals in many vapes, like formaldehyde, are linked to lung cancer, while others, such as acrolein, damage the lungs. Along with this, vaping is a dopamine stimulant, which means when you vape you get a short “feel good” sensation which fuels addiction.
My school isn’t the only one where vaping popularity has spread rapidly. A 2024 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 7.8% of high schoolers (as well as 3.5% of middle schoolers) vape. What makes vapes attractive to teens is, in part, the fact that some have flavors such as “Pink Lemonade”, “Blue Razberry”, “Bubble Gum” or “Root Beer,” which removes the harsh flavor of nicotine. Beyond that, some vapes are marketed in a way that would appeal to teens. Case in point: If you go on the website of Geek Bar, one of the popular vape brands (and, granted, click past the confirmation that you’re twenty-one), you will be greeted by a spaceship flying toward a planet-like vape. It feels like a video game.
There have been some attempts by lawmakers to help prevent and curb youth vaping and smoking. In 2019, the legal age to smoke was raised to twenty-one nationwide, and New York State has passed laws to ban vape advertisements that resemble that of school supplies or toys, or feature kids’ cartoon characters. Schools are also in a powerful position to intervene. At my own school, we’ve had assemblies to discuss the dangers of vaping, and the consequences of doing so.
However, these assemblies mostly were focused on the latter–with the consequence typically being a two- to six-day suspension, before the student is sent back to school. We also have smoke detectors in the bathrooms, but they can be bypassed by putting a plastic bag over the detector, or blowing the smoke into a toilet and flushing it.
I think we need to change the focus of how schools deal with vaping. When a student is caught vaping, the main focus should not be how to best punish the student, but rather what’s the best way to support the student to help deal with their addiction. At my school, you can go to a school therapist to get help with your vaping problem, but they will also alert your parents.
As a consequence, I have not yet met anyone who has seen the therapist for vaping addiction–because no one wants their parents to know about their problem. This is despite 64% of middle and high school students who use e-cigarettes reporting that they wanted to quit. Schools should make it a bigger priority to offer a helping hand in this journey, including offering resources without immediately notifying parents.
Another idea would be creating safe spaces to talk to other students who are quitting– to show that they are not alone, and so they can hold each other accountable. Beyond that, we should put a bigger focus on prevention by teaching students the facts and dangers about vaping; this could be in the form of a “Tobacco and E-Cigarette Prevention Day,” where students do interactive exercises to learn about these dangers.
It’s a school’s purpose to protect and educate their students. By not properly addressing the vaping epidemic, schools are putting their students at risk of permanent, long-term health problems. In a 1994 memo presenting schools with health program guidelines to prevent tobacco use and addiction, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote “school-based programs to prevent tobacco use can make a substantial contribution to the health of the next generation.” That is still the case–but schools need to do their part in fighting the vaping epidemic through proper education, prevention, and intervention.