From vaping, the cost of supplies to cellphone policies, the WTOP team is studying up on hot-button topics in education across the D.C. region. Follow our series “WTOP Goes Back to School” on air and online this August and September.
School systems in the D.C. region have been wrestling with the issue of students vaping over the past couple of years. They’ve installed detectors, stationed bathroom monitors and warned teachers about the ways students might try to sneak a puff.
But the issue hasn’t evaporated. According to CDC research from 2023, 2.1 million students currently use e-cigarettes.
Of the kids who vape, 25% reported using e-cigarettes daily; more than 22,000 were surveyed by the FDA.
Natalie Gospodinoff is a tobacco control coordinator who works in Northern Virginia with the state’s department of health.
“Youth vaping is a public health concern,” Gospodinoff said. “E-cigarettes are currently the most widely used tobacco product among young people in the United States.”
While the number of high school students using tobacco decreased between 2022 and 2023, the number of middle school students went up, according to the FDA.
Teachers and advocates in the D.C. area who spoke with WTOP agreed that vaping continues to be an issue — particularly with younger students.
“Being a middle school teacher, I’ve found that it started to filter into the middle school,” said David Walrod, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers.
Walrod is also a special-education teacher at Lake Braddock Secondary School. He’s heard about some of the school system’s youngest students getting caught vaping in elementary schools.
How vaping impacts kids’ health
Any form of nicotine use, including vaping, has been found to have negative health impacts, experts say.
E-cigarettes can damage lungs, leading to impacts such COPD, asthma and lung cancer. The chemicals found in e-cigarettes can cause lung disease or heart disease.
Young people are also prone to getting hooked on nicotine because their brains are still developing, Gospodinoff said.
“The human brain develops up until the age of 26 and nicotine use changes the way the young people’s brain function, so it can affect attention, mood learning and impulse control,” Gospodinoff said.
A ‘cat and mouse game’ for schools hoping to discipline behavior
Students are avoiding getting caught by vaping in bathrooms or other spaces away from supervision and using increasingly discrete devices, teachers and anti-nicotine advocates tell WTOP.
Nia Naylor, 22, spoke with kids at a D.C. camp over the summer about the topic of vaping as part of her volunteer work with the Truth Initiative — an organization that educates young people about the dangers of nicotine use.
“When it is inside of school, it’s mainly during those periods where students aren’t necessarily in class, but they’ll be in a free period,” Naylor said of the students she spoke with. “Where they have a lot of availability, and they have a lot of freedom in what it is that they choose to do.”
The way the issue is being addressed varies on a school-by-school basis, according to teachers such as Jared Bridges, who’s taught English to high schoolers in Prince William County Public Schools for 10 years.
In what Bridges calls a “cat and mouse game,” some schools have opted to limit when or where students can use the restroom during the school day by locking off certain restrooms.
“You’re inconveniencing students who aren’t doing anything wrong, and you’re just pushing the students to go and miss more class time when they have to use the restroom, and now they have to walk five, 10 minutes out of their way,” Bridges said.
Others are enforcing a policy where students have to use an electronic hall pass.
“Students have to check out to go use the restroom, and anybody in the school is able to look and see what students are out in the hallway, what students are in the bathroom,” Walrod said.
That allows schools to see which students are gone from class longer than expected.
Some schools have assigned employees to monitor restrooms or upped the number of employees walking through the building in hopes of sniffing out students who are vaping.
“I think the more adult presence, the more administrative presence that you see, the harder it is for students to get away with it, and the less that students try to get away with it,” Walrod said.
Since most students vaping on school property are believed to be using devices during times, they are not supervised by a school employee, it can be difficult to pin down how often it’s happening, Walrod said.
“You can’t have eyes on every single student 100% of the time,” Walrod said.
Increasingly discrete devices have contributed to the problem, Bridges said. He’ll receive photos from administrators of vaping devices to watch out for, with some resembling USB drives.
“Because the devices are becoming more and more discreet and small,” Bridges said, “it’s naturally going to lead to more students feeling like they can get away with sneaking something into school or doing something without getting caught.”
The traditional discipline measures often used by administrators — suspension or detention — sometimes worsen the situation by forcing students to miss time they could be learning in class.
“When you do that, you’re also now removing those students, some of which were already struggling,” Jared Bridges said.
Meanwhile, schools have also had to account for widespread absenteeism and addressing a mental health crisis when considering whether to suspend students.
Some schools have tried to put that time out of the classroom to good use by requiring suspended students to go through an educational program on the dangers of substance abuse.
“They’re actually trying to educate the students about the dangers of what they’re doing and why it’s a problem as well,” Bridges said of Prince William County public schools.
Walrod said he’s interested in schools doing more to address vaping.
“The younger students start smoking, the harder it is for them to ever stop and so if schools can help prevent students from starting, they’re less likely to start in the future,” Walrod said. “And if they do start in the future, it’ll be easier for them to break themselves of the habit.”
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