Local Schools Address E-cigarettes and Vaping with LifeSkills
Vaping, it seems, is everywhere, and school districts in Washington and Greene counties are educating teachers, parents and students about the dangers of using e-cigarettes and vape pens.
School districts also are updating drug and alcohol policies to keep the devices off school grounds.
In Greene County, Jefferson-Morgan School District Superintendent Joseph Orr said there have been a “handful” of incidents during the 2017-18 school year, and he anticipates incidents to rise as the popularity of the devices increases.
Federal regulations prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from purchasing the devices, but use of e-cigarettes and battery-powered vaporizers among teens – who inhale vapors from nicotine mixed with liquid in flavors including gummy bear, cotton candy and Mountain Dew – has exploded. E-cigarettes and vape pens have become popular with teens over the last few years, but they aren’t safe, according to Pennsylvania Deputy Secretary for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Dr. Loren Robinson.
Smoking the devices “delivers cancer-causing chemicals to the body, and the flavoring used by many teens in these devices appears to be the most dangerous. Normalizing smoking for young adults through e-cigarettes introduces them to a lifetime of addiction,” said Robinson.
E-cigarettes and vape pens are part of a class of devices known as Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, which also include e-hookahs, e-cigars and e-pipes.
E-cigarettes now come in easily concealed, high-tech designs. One of the most popular e-cigarettes, Juul, resembles a USB storage device and can be charged by plugging it into a USB port. Each Juul cartridge contains as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes.
“Juuls are the new thing. Kids are Juuling now, and you hear about kids Juuling during class,” said Martin. “They look just like a jump drive and a student could have one on the desk and you wouldn’t even know it.”
Pennsylvania high school students consume e-cigarettes at a rate higher than other students across the country. One in every four high school seniors in Pennsylvania reports having used an e-cigarette in a 30-day period, which is 10 percent higher than the national average. More teens used e-cigarettes in Pennsylvania in 2015, according to the 2015 Pennsylvania Youth Survey, than used cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.
Experts are concerned about the impact e-cigarettes have on teens. According to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics, teens who use e-cigarettes are up to three times more likely to have dangerous chemicals in their systems than teens who do not use, including chemicals known to cause cancer.
Teens who use e-cigarettes are also twice as likely to start smoking traditional cigarettes.
The report goes on to say that youth and young adults are also at risk for long-term, long-lasting effects of exposing their developing brains to nicotine, including nicotine addiction, mood disorders and permanent lowering of impulse control.