7 ways to prevent vaping in schools
E‑cigarette and vape use among young people has exploded into what the Surgeon General and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) have called ‘epidemic’ levels. This represents a major challenge for schools as shown in a joint study into vaping in schools by the FDA and the Center for Disease Control. It found that 7.7% of students reported current use of e‑cigarettes, with more than 1 in 4 users vaping every day.
Additionally, the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study found that the share of high school seniors who said they’d vaped nicotine in the past month jumped from 11% in 2017 to 21% in 2022. To highlight how youth vaping has spread across all age groups, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that past-month use of e‑cigarettes was 9.5% among 8th graders, 14% among 10th graders and 16.2% among 12th graders.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, vaping in high schools and vaping in middle schools are threats that are easily concealed, easily exchanged and easily obtained. That can make school bathrooms and other private spaces prime vaping zones.
The negative impacts of vaping on campus
This widespread use of vaping among students has serious consequences, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). Like other researchers, the AHA found that the use of vapes is associated with:
- Higher rates of wheezing and cough
- Greater prevalence of asthma
- Increased incidence of respiratory disease
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids believes that e‑cigarette use by young people can also harm adolescent brain development by exposing users to harmful and carcinogenic chemicals. The Campaign also shares a concern that teen vaping may create a new generation of young nicotine and tobacco users, which could undermine progress in reducing tobacco use and nicotine addiction.
However, the AHA also highlighted the mental health risks of vaping. Students who become addicted can experience nicotine withdrawal when they try to stop with side effects that include:
- Irritability
- Restlessness
- Feeling anxious or depressed
- Problems concentrating
In response to these risks to students’ health and education, school leaders and teachers must take urgent action to find ways to stop vaping in schools.
However, evidence from many of the sources above indicates that teen vaping can be an addiction. Just trying to stop vaping through punishment or other sanctions may simply drive the problem outside school. Students who can’t vape at school may just continue vaping at home. That’s why solutions to school vaping should be based on wider, proactive education and support in addition to detection and enforcement policies.
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7 steps to stop vaping in schools
If your educational facility is considering how to stop vaping in schools, you can take measures to help you detect and prevent it and help students overcome problems associated with vaping. Successful solutions and ways to stop vaping in schools balance education, enforcement and support with the use of technology to detect vaping. These are some of the strategies that can help you deal with how to stop vaping in schools.
1. Implement vape detectors and security technologies
One of the most important ways to stop vaping in schools is to install vape detectors. Vape detectors have four important roles:
- Identify where vaping takes place
- Determine the scale of the problem
- Act as a deterrent since vapers know
- Serve as a tool to enforce vaping policies
School vape detectors are small, highly sensitive devices similar in size and shape to smoke detectors. You can mount them on walls or ceilings anywhere on the campus. However, they are most likely to be used to monitor vaping in school bathrooms, which experience indicates is the most popular location for vapers. When the device senses vaping, it sends a notification to a designated person so that your staff can take action.
When planning how to stop vaping in schools and school bathrooms, you can also consider supplementing vape detectors by installing other security technologies. Security cameras with video analytics should be installed in the corridors outside bathrooms. Like vape detectors, school security cameras act as a visual deterrent, but they can also observe vaping and provide evidence if the vape clouds spill into the corridor. Additionally, cameras can integrate with vape detectors and wider school security systems to provide video coverage of nearby areas when vaping is detected.
Purchasing and installing vape detectors and IP security cameras can impact on overstretched school budgets. However, your school can apply for a wide range of federal and state grants or seek funding from local businesses or non-profit organizations.
2. Establish clear, strong policies on vaping
A vape-free policy is an essential measure of how to stop vaping in schools and school bathrooms. The policy should state that a vape-free school does not allow vaping anywhere on campus, in class, in school bathrooms and corridors or at school events outside normal hours. All students and staff should be aware of the policy and understand the reasons behind it.
To emphasize the policy’s importance, the school principal or leadership team member should present the policy when it is first introduced. As a follow-up, copies of the policy should be posted throughout the school and communicated to parents through normal school messaging channels.
3. Enforce consequences for vaping on campus
An effective policy must be enforceable with clear consequences and consistent enforcement for anyone caught vaping. While strong forms of enforcement such as detention, temporary suspension or permanent expulsion may be necessary, they may not be appropriate for every case.
Some schools ask ‘first-time offenders’ to attend one-to-one discussions or special classes to learn more about the risks of vaping while reserving stronger forms of discipline for students who consistently break the rules. Balancing discipline with education may produce better long-term outcomes for students who recognize the personal consequences of their actions.
4. Educate your students
When planning how to prevent vaping in school, education should be a priority. Students who understand the potentially harmful effects of e‑cigarettes may be less likely to start or continue vaping.
However, evidence from the National Institute on Drug Abuse indicates that many teens don’t understand what e‑cigarettes contain or how the ingredients can harm them. Manufacturers don’t have to report e‑cigarette ingredients, so vapers don’t know what’s in them. According to the Institute, up to 13.7% of teens who vape don’t know what is in their e‑cigarette. Some are even unaware that vapes contain nicotine.
- 66% say just flavoring
- 13.7% don’t know
- 13.2% say nicotine
- 5.8% say marijuana
- 1.3% say other ingredients
Education and information can help build understanding and awareness. When students understand the risks associated with vaping they can make informed decisions about whether or not to vape. Your school can offer education programs in several ways:
- Whole school assemblies
- Classroom sessions
- Presentations by recovering addicts
- One-to-one sessions
- Posters and other information resources in bathrooms and corridors
5. Educate and involve your staff and faculty
Just as important as student education, it’s essential to ensure your staff are fully aware of the risk of vaping and how to spot it. As Johns Hopkins Medicine pointed out, vaping is easy to conceal. Vapes are small and difficult to detect when they’re not alight. So, staff must be capable of recognizing a vape. Teachers should also be familiar with the smells associated with vaping. Unlike smoking, which has a distinctive odor, vapes tend to have a sweet smell that varies with the flavoring of the vape.
Staff should also be aware of vaping symptoms students might display in class. They should be on the lookout for several characteristics that might indicate that a student is a persistent vaper – depression, lack of motivation, poor focus and frequent requests for bathroom trips. Although that student’s mental state might have other causes, it can be a strong indicator of vaping.
Principals and other school leaders play a key role in training staff on preventing vaping in schools. They should establish clear policies on vaping and ensure staff understand and are aware of vaping and the powers to enforce policies. They should also work with staff to determine how to incorporate student vaping education into already busy teaching timetables and schedules. Staff should encourage class buy-in by involving students in setting classroom policies.
Principals can play a leading role by acting as visible champions of anti-vaping initiatives. They might take responsibility for presentations to students, for example, or get involved in student workshops.
6. Involve parents in vaping initiatives and education
Parents should understand the risks of teen vaping and be aware of the school’s vaping policies. Parents who smoke or vape themselves may assume that their children, like them, do not face any risk from vaping. Parents who don’t smoke may not understand the risks of vaping because they have no personal experience.
That makes it important for your school to reach out to parents with clear information on the risks of vaping and school policies. Where practical, you might invite parents to a general meeting to discuss vaping with staff and, perhaps with health experts. As part of parent engagement, encourage parents to restrict access to vapes and to look out for warning signs and behavioral changes that might indicate addiction.
Parents should be informed if a student contravenes the school vaping policy and faces sanctions. They should be encouraged to respect any sanctions and invite them to discuss any actions they can take to discourage children from vaping.
7. Provide resources for students struggling with vaping
Educational organizations focused on how to prevent vaping in schools, rather than how to stop it, take a proactive approach to helping students stop vaping. They might achieve that by providing counseling or helping students access anti-smoking services for their addictions.
Counseling can be vital for students who suffer mental health issues resulting from long-term vaping or addiction to smoking. Early intervention is important because experts believe that mental stress can encourage vapers and smokers to increase their use. Counseling sessions and ongoing support from qualified school staff or external specialists may help vapers to change their behavior and quit vaping.
For students who indicate that they want to quit vaping, but don’t feel confident of succeeding, your school can help by providing access to specialist programs for teens. An example of a dedicated and successful program is ‘Not on Tobacco’. This program, which is recommended by the American Lung Association, offers teen vapers a series of 50-minute sessions tailored to individual users to help them change their habits.
Support programs like that can help schools deal with vapers proactively and may provide a better long-term solution than disciplinary action which does not prevent the recurrence of vaping.
Conclusion
Taking some of the aforementioned measures can help your school deal with the crisis affecting campuses. As the statistics in the introduction show, the problem of vaping is not confined to one age group. Vaping in middle schools is as prevalent as vaping in high schools.
The consequences of vaping cited by health authorities demonstrate the long-term health risks that teen vaping can cause. By taking a proactive approach to preventing vaping in your school, you can help create a safer, healthier campus environment and better life prospects for your students.