Several schools across the country such as Mentone’s St Bede’s College in Melbourne and South Morang’s Marymede Catholic College have already invested in silent vape detectors to alert teachers when cunning students use vaping products in bathrooms. Many other schools are considering taking the same measures.
With many Australian students experimenting with vaping products preferring to do so in school bathrooms, this technology seems like the best bet to catch the culprits. The technology senses tobacco content in the air and triggers a silent email system that alerts teachers. At the same time, it locks off all the toilets where the content emanated from. This makes it easy for the teachers to find the students engaged in the vice. The silent alarm system is designed to complement the CCTV cameras already installed by most Australian high schools outside students’ bathrooms.
smoking and vaping on school grounds are illegal in Australia. In a story published in the Herald Sun, Mark James, the deputy principal of St Bede’s College believes that teenagers engaging in vaping and tobacco smoking is harmful to their health. The school, therefore, is trying to do what it can to help stop students from experimenting with harmful tobacco products. He further notes that using vapes makes it difficult to detect when students are using tobacco products as these products are easy to conceal.
Some students admit that they are concerned with the new technology. One year 12 student we spoke to says that he is afraid that the new technology may accidentally lock him in the bathroom even when he has no contraband items.
However, most students agree that the silent alarm systems will act as a good deterrent. Many students who will wish to bring tobacco products to school will likely fear being caught and thus will not attempt to do so. This will thus help many other students who would otherwise have been tempted into trying those harmful products if made easily available in school.
Many experts are concerned that vaping by school-going students has steadily increased since the COVID 19 lockdowns. Many students picked up the practice while holed up at home during the lockdowns and are now bringing it to schools. This is likely to influence many other teenagers who hadn’t experimented with tobacco.
What’s even more worrying to experts is the fact that some vaping products may have high nicotine levels for underage smokers. This is further compounded by the fact that many high school and college students are not aware of the risks that using tobacco products poses. This can be very dangerous if these school children are not monitored.
In a recent report, a healthy teenage boy at Blue Mountains Grammar school in west Sydney recently suffered from a huge seizure as a result of ingesting a high dose of nicotine when vaping in school bathrooms. He was quickly rushed to the hospital but medics fear that he is likely to suffer from long-term brain damage.
In a letter to parents in early June the deputy headmaster of the school Owen Laffin talked about the incident saying ‘While I am profoundly grateful to say that the student has now recovered, the risk of head injury or hypoxia-induced brain damage is terrible to contemplate.’
Laffin acknowledged that his school like most other schools across Australia was having ongoing problems with monitoring and preventing students from using vapes. He argued with parents and the community at large to discuss the dangers of vaping with the children and guide them.
Both tobacco and alcohol need to be of legal age to be allowed. Teenagers are not stable enough in their self-control and need to be monitored.
