In recent months, administrators have begun to crack down on their mission to prevent vaping. These measures have included having teachers monitor the hallways during passing periods, and even making students leave their personal devices in the classroom when using the restroom to prevent them from contacting fellow students in regard to vaping. Additionally, the increase in the recorded number of vaping incidents across the school (around 160 vaping incidents in 2019 and 72 incidents in 2022), administrators have tried to combat the rising numbers of vaping incidents by installing vaping detectors in 2023. However, even with these measures in place, student vaping persists. While we commend these efforts, we have other ideas that we believe would better alleviate the problem.

First, administrators should consider teaching students the dangers of vaping throughout their whole high school careers, not just during elementary and middle school. We often see the anti-vaping campaigns and lectures in our early years of education but less and less of that once we attend high school. Every year, each English class meets in the auditorium to talk about expectations for the upcoming school year along with a brief mention of safety in the school. If we truly want to help students stay safe and away from vaping, that auditorium time would be the perfect moment to share the dangers of vaping. There could even be a separate meeting as a whole about the risks of nicotine and vaping to really share the message of how dangerous vaping truly is. The more reinforcement and talks of health risk there are, the safer students will be in the future from vaping.

Other ways to help students realize the dangers of vaping include visual exposure to its effects. For instance, many schools feature different posters in places such as restrooms, cafeterias and more so students can directly read the negative effects of a vape’s chemicals and how that affects their daily lives. While this school has many posters, putting them in more prominent locations as well as outside of restrooms where most vaping occurs, would be a good start to preventing vaping. If CHS were to implement more discernible posters all across the school, students would be able to see first hand how vaping would affect their lives both academically and socially.

Additionally, CHS could attempt to develop peer-to-peer education programs to help students connect to the community on the fears of vaping. Everyone knows the administration is occupied with a plethora of issues during the school year which is why it could be beneficial for this school to begin a program or club that focuses directly on student volunteers who could share their experiences with vaping and create posters, lessons and more. Studies and teachers often find students learn better when the information comes from their peers. This would create a perfect volunteer opportunity for interested students wanting to help their peers and the community and indirectly benefit the student body by educating them on the negative effects of vaping.

Finally, administrators should consider harsher consequences for those caught vaping. While admirable, this school’s current vaping and nicotine measures aren’t doing enough to prevent the problem. The current zero-tolerance policy for vaping and nictoine use doesn’t have strong enough consequences for students to be deterred from actually vaping. A ticket, fine and suspension, which are currently in place – just enables students to repeat their behavior. While there is a threat of expulsion, many students are instead given a slap on the wrist with an in-or out-of-school suspension and are at risk for being addicted for an even longer period of time.

In the end, If we truly want to help stop the spread of vaping in this school, administrators should consider all of these measures, to educate the school on the negative consequences of vaping.