Montgomery County Council members will hold a public hearing on Tuesday before voting on a proposal to provide $2 million in supplemental funding that would help pay for installing vape detectors in the Maryland county’s public high schools.
Council President Andrew Friedson told reporters in a briefing Monday that it’s “all hands on deck” when it comes to addressing the “vaping epidemic” in its schools.
“If you go into too many of our schools, you’ll see cartridges in the trash cans in the bathrooms,” said Friedson.
“We have heard it from students, we have heard it from teachers, we’ve heard it from counselors, and we are diligently and aggressively working together with our partners in the school system to address it,” added Friedson.
The Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveys — conducted on a biennial basis — have shown that 14% of Maryland teens vape, compared to 10% in D.C. and 8% in Virginia, according to Friedson.
The Montgomery County Board of Education approved a plan in August to use $2 million in settlement money from Juul Labs, the manufacturer of a popular type of e-cigarettes, from a 2020 suit where the school system alleged the company caused severe public harm to youth in the county and used false marketing to influence and get young people addicted to its products.
While the school system has the authority over how to use those funds, the board needs county council approval for the allocation.
Montgomery County Public Schools piloted the use of vape detectors in several high schools in 2023, but did not include data on its findings.
At an August school board meeting, the chief of district operations for Montgomery County schools, Dana Edwards, said the school system would take what it learned during the pilot period and employ “best practices” but did not specify what those were.
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