Montgomery County Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to use $2 million in supplemental funding to help pay for installing vape detectors in the Maryland county’s public high schools.
Ahead of the council’s 11-0 vote, members heard from community members who voiced their support and concerns regarding the issue of vaping and the reliability of the detectors.
Scott Webber, with the Vaping Awareness Public Education Society, said the detectors are known to not work.
“I’m here in stark opposition to this funding bill because it represents, essentially, a fiscal folly in the concept of a smoke vaping detection system that is known to not work. It can so easily be defeated,” Webber said, adding those who vape simply have to blow the vapor down into their shirt.
If a detector inside a bathroom were to go off, Webber questioned how the school system could even figure out who set it off by the time an official responded to the bathroom. He also said bathroom are well ventilated, making it easier for students to get away with vaping, even if detectors are installed.
The money meant for the vape detectors will be included in the county school system’s FY-25 operating budget. While the school system has the authority over how to use those funds, the board needed the county council’s approval for the allocation.
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,” Friedson said.
“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,” Friedson said.
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 in which 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.
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.
WTOP’s Ciara Wells contributed to this report.
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