Professional Learning for Busy Educators

A glimpse of student athletes in peak physical condition vaping just moments after competing in a football game led Stamford High School Principal Raymond Manka to reconsider his approach to the epidemic.

His school traditionally has emphasized discipline for those caught with e-cigarettes. Punishments become increasingly severe with each offense, from in-school suspensions to out-of-school suspensions and, eventually, notification of law enforcement.

But Manka began thinking about it more as an addiction problem, and less of a behavior issue, after seeing the two players from another school vaping near their bus. "It broke my heart," said Manka, whose school is now exploring how to offer cessation programs for students caught vaping or with vaping paraphernalia.

"We've got to figure out how we can help these kids wean away from bad habits that might hurt their body or their mind or otherwise create behaviors that can create habits that will be harmful for the remainder of their lives," he said.

Lured by glamorized images of vaping on social media with hashtags like #VapeLife and #DoIt4Juul—Instagram contains 13.4 million #VapeLife posts—many kids seem unaware of the risks involved. A recent survey by the Truth Initiative found that 63 percent of 15- to 24-year-old previous 30-day users surveyed didn’t know that vapor pods, which come in hundreds of kid-friendly flavors like gummy worms, cotton candy, and unicorn puke, contain highly addictive nicotine—a single pod containing 200 puffs can have just as much as a pack of Marlboros or Camels.

As vaping devices are increasingly showing up in school parking lots, bathrooms, and even classrooms, teachers and administrators are scrambling to address the problem. But it isn’t easy. Unlike their traditional counterparts, e-cigarettes are easy to buy online and conceal, and they don’t carry a strong smell. The popular brand Juul, which represents the majority of e-cigarette sales, looks like a USB drive and is small enough to hide in a shirtsleeve.

In response, here are some of the promising ways that schools and districts are trying to curb what Jonathan Winickoff, doctor and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium, has called a “public health disaster.”

E-cigarettes and vapes have exploded in popularity in the last decade, especially among youth and young adults -- from 2011 to 2015, e-cigarette use among high school students in the US increased by 900 percent. Biobehavioral scientist Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin explains what you're actually inhaling when you vape (hint: it's definitely not water vapor) and explores the disturbing marketing tactics being used to target kids. "Our health, the health of our children and our future generations is far too valuable to let it go up in smoke -- or even in aerosol," she says.