A 2019 Student Health and Risk Prevention (SHARP) survey showed that 24% of all Granite School District (Utah) students had tried e-cigarettes. The same survey also found that 12.8% of the students who had tried vaping were currently using those products. According to FOX 13, the students vaping problem has grown since then and is now a major problem in schools across Utah.
This is the problem that Michael Douglas, Cottonwood High School principal is trying to solve. Douglas has a large stash of vaping devices in his office that he says were confiscated from students found using them in school. The number of students caught with those devices keeps growing year after year with no hope for a decline in sight.
Douglas says that last year his school-issued 31 vaping citation tickets, but this does not seem to help. Instead of such traditional deterrent methods helping data shows that the problem is doubling. The school has already issued close to half of all vape citation tickets it issued all of last year in the first half of this school year. So far, Douglas says that 14 citation tickets for vape use in school so far in the 2022-23 school year.
The most concerning issue to Douglas is that young school kids are not just using nicotine vapes but they are also turning to THC marijuana vapes. This presents a major problem as contaminated THC products have been found to cause many serious health problems such as lung injuries.
This has prompted Douglas to look for alternative methods to curb the problem in school. He says the school is now planning to install vape detectors. Last November he wrote to JUUL and VUSE about the vaping problem in his high school. He hopes that the two largest vaping product sellers in North America will help foot the bill for the vape detectors his school plans to install in the school’s six bathrooms. He says that this is where most students vape and having these devices here will help deter them.
According to Douglas, vape detectors work just like smoke detectors. If installed in the bathrooms they will sense a change in air composition and set off an alarm. This way students will learn to avoid those places when they have contraband products.
He further says the main problem is that vape detectors tend to be quite expensive. Some of the best devices come with a price tag northward of $12,000. Douglas would love to see the companies that have created this problem get involved in solving the problem.
Speaking to FOX13 Douglas said that he already received a response from a VUSE representative. In the email, the representative said that the company will contact him in early 2023. However, he said JUUL had not yet responded to his letter.
It is not just the principal who is concerned even parents at Cottonwood High School sophomore are raising an alarm about the vaping problem and they want the problem fixed fast. One such parent is Robyn Ivins who bemoans the fact that all vaping products are packaged in bright colours and come with many kids’ friendly flavours. He believes that these companies are doing these intentionally to target kids. He says that he has caught students vaping in class during his short stint as a substitute teacher in one of the high schools in the district. He supports the idea of having vape detectors installed in the school. He says they have already proven to be quite effective elsewhere.
