Vaping in School

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Vaping is becoming increasingly common in our high school. From a discipline standpoint we treat it as a tobacco violation unless of course it has marijuana wax in it. What I want to know is how do other schools handle it from a health education standpoint? The kids (and frequently their parents) see no problem with this. Anyone have any wisdom or resources you can share?

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Specializes in School Nurse.

Vaping is by policy illegal on campus by anybody. We indeed treat it identically to smoking. While vaping may be safer than smoking, it's from benign and it's contraband for the kids to have. As for adults, I'm less concerned, but our county policy casts a wide net. My personal opinion on that is that, no matter how beniign the activity may be to other people around, people hate smokers.

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Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.

GAAA. I have posters up and I had the NHS kids make one about why vaping is not benign. Does anyone look at it? I don't know. I also asked our very active news media staff to cover this along with other topics when it's a slow news week. They have a news channel and we have video boards around school that they populate with stuff.

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Specializes in Cardiology, School Nursing, General.

We caught one last year... vaping... in class. They wanted me to check her vitals and stuff to make sure it wasn't something else. I mean really? In class?

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Specializes in School nursing.

Vaping "juice" may just be colored liquid, but it may also contain nicotine or may be laced with THC. We just added it to our handbook and handle it like any other drug/tobacco product.

As for teaching...last year I tried a different approach with my students to discuss marijuana. I decided to bring in some peer review articles and talk about what we know about it (and what we didn't because of lack of long-term research) and its effects on health from a science perspective. We also discussed laws and consequences of using a legal product (legal in my state for 21+) that can impairment judgement in certain situations and impact of using it on work quality. It was an interesting discussion.

I'm actually brainstorming how to best bridge the vaping discussion with 8th graders in my health class next quarter. Because it has become a bigger issue with them and it is not just colored water they are vaping. I can't start with peer reviewed articles, but may start with health data and what we know vs. not. And, of course, what is legal vs what isn't.

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My personal opinion on that is that, no matter how beniign the activity may be to other people around, people hate smokers.

This is definitely true. I used to smoke and was always embarrassed by it. When my sisters and I were kids, our mom smoked when she was driving our girl scout troops around, on the softball field as our coach, heck, in the break room at work (she's a nurse too!)

Can you imagine what the reaction would be now if the girl scout leader showed up to drive 6 kids around in a car while she was smoking?

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Specializes in Med-surg, school nursing..

I rode with my dad to the doctor the other day and he started smoking in the car. I thought I was going to die. Then I felt I smelled like smoke the rest of the day. I HATE IT!!

I feel so bad for these kiddos, ya know, the ones with chronic asthma, whose parents come in reeking of smoke. Ugh, breaks my heart. Like maybe your kid could breathe if you stopped smoking around them.

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This is definitely true. I used to smoke and was always embarrassed by it. When my sisters and I were kids, our mom smoked when she was driving our girl scout troops around, on the softball field as our coach, heck, in the break room at work (she's a nurse too!)

Can you imagine what the reaction would be now if the girl scout leader showed up to drive 6 kids around in a car while she was smoking?

I'm so glad you quit.

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Specializes in Cardiology, School Nursing, General.

I remember the DARE thing they did when I was a kid. I thought of it as educational, especially with the smoking section, showed us the consequences of long-term smoking. When I was in high school I took a health class and they showed us a diseased lung and a healthy lung.

It encouraged me to keep myself clean and become a donor.

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I used to work in-patient adolescent psych. We had kids who were psychotic for days, weeks, and longer, after vaping, or "dabbing" with the thc wax/oil. It's terrifying. These were kids with no psych history, and the symptoms don't respond to the newer antipsychotics. I wish there was an ethical way to record the behaviors to show kids who are starting to experiment. The stuff these kids did before they cleared up would scare, or at least humiliate, any teen.

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Specializes in kids.

Interesting link re vaping devices

Teenagers Say JUUL Is A Discreet Way To Vape In Class : Shots - Health News : NPR

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Specializes in School nursing.

Interesting indeed! I think I'll share this link with my MS Dean of students.

Size of a flash drive. I mean I saw a tampon flask the other day so not surprised.

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