Teachers fight back against school vape crisis: Classrooms across the country install vapor detectors as student e-cigarette use reaches epidemic levels

Childhood vaping has become so prevalent that schools across America are beginning to install vapor detectors in bathrooms.

An estimated 2.6 million high school students vape, and teachers say students have smuggled devices up their sleeves in recent years to vape discreetly in the classroom, causing distractions and secondary effects on nearby children.

And increasingly, teachers say their students have become so addicted that they feel the need to leave class to get their nicotine fix in bathrooms.

Maine’s Lewiston school system — one of the largest in the state with more than 5,100 students — is the latest to reveal plans to install the detectors in restrooms.

The detectors have been used with great success in several other counties in several states, including New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois.

More than 2.5 million American children use e-cigarettes – half a million more than 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. It’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 looking at a bill likely to exceed $100,000, an amount that will not fit into their budget and will have to come 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 that federal regulators have cracked down on in recent years over concerns that they are deliberately marketing themselves to children.

Still, teens are often able to get their hands on flavored vapes, usually disposable devices packed with high concentrations of highly addictive nicotine thanks to lenient enforcement in stores.

The vape detectors aren’t a foregone conclusion yet, as Lewiston school officials still have to come up with a significant amount of money to buy and install them in bathrooms, which have become overcrowded by the steady stream of kids huffing fumes in stalls.

The school’s superintendent is looking at some type of device that could connect to the high school’s current security system.

If vaping is detected, an alarm will sound and nearby video cameras timestamp their recordings, allowing administrators to identify students who were in the bathroom at the time.

A Lewiston district chief, Jonathan Radtke, said: ‘We will continue to monitor bathrooms with staff, but we can’t have someone stationed in every bathroom every period.’

Long waits for the toilet are just one reason for school administrators to install vapor detectors. James Stemple, executive director of Constituent Services at Stafford County Public Schools in Texas and former principal told an NBC-affiliated station that vaping by students in schools is one of the biggest problems it has seen in education in more than two decades.

Mr Stempel said: It is an addictive problem. Kids have to leave the classroom to vape or we’ve had kids in the classroom trying to vape in the classroom.”

The CDC report found that a vast majority, nearly 85 percent, of teen e-cigarette users report using flavored nicotine products. The FDA is cracking down on flavored tobacco products in an effort to reduce the number of teen smoking in the US

The CDC found that more than one in four teen users reported using their e-cigarette every day, and another 40 percent used it in at least 20 of the past 30 days

In New Jersey, 10 school districts have installed detectors, many of which also pick up vapor produced by devices containing THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. And several suburban Chicago school systems, such as Hinsdale South High Schools and Evanston Township High School, have installed such devices.

In Ohio, Revere Local School District has installed 16 vape detectors at Revere High School and Revere Middle School as of 2019. Assistant Director Doug Faris said earlier this year that the devices helped discourage vaping in bathrooms, although they are not foolproof.

Mr. Faris said, “You see the vapor detector going off twenty times a day. That’s not to say that 20 kids are vaping. The vape detector registers changes in the air quality in the bathroom, so if you go out and grab a body spray and spray it, it will go off. It’s hard for us to say exactly, but it helps.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating because you’re in the cafeteria and it goes off in the A wing and you’re like, ‘By the time I walk over there, they’re gone.’ It’s difficult, but it helps.

“I’ve gotten two so far today, and I just happened to be right by this bathroom and in a few seconds I was able to get to the bathroom.”

According to a 2022 CDC survey, an estimated 14 percent of high school students and three percent of high school students use the devices regularly.

The report also found that 85 percent of those who reported using the devices regularly used flavored e-cigarettes.

28 percent of users said they puffed on their e-cigarettes every day. Just over 40 percent reported using it at least 20 times or more in the past 30 days.