With summer ending soon, school districts are preparing for the new year—and trying to figure out how to head off the growing trend of students using vape pens on their campuses.
Vaping, which for years was seen as an alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes, has had more teens and young adults pick up the habit in recent years, said Sandeep Gupta, a pulmonologist in the Greater Houston area.
“We don’t know the long-term effects of vaping,” Gupta said. “Lungs are very finicky and easy to damage. It doesn't have to be direct damage.”
While local school districts in some cases saw the number of students caught with vape pens peak prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, those numbers plummeted from 2020-22, according to data obtained by Community Impact.
However, since students have returned to traditional learning, those numbers have begun to rebound and in many cases have exceeded previous years, the data shows.
More students caught
At Clear Creek ISD, the number of students caught vaping nearly more than doubled in the 2018-19 school year compared to 2017-18, data from the district shows.
Those numbers dropped during the next two years, which coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, but still were higher than 2017-18, according to the data.
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However, since then, the number of incidents have rebounded—up to 582 in 2021-22—and were the highest they’ve been in this six-year period during the 2022-23 school year, according to the data.
Franklin Moses, assistant superintendent of secondary education, said the problem has been made worse in recent years due to increased access to vape devices. To help combat the problem, the district has taken to actions such as color-coding hall passes to better make sure students are going where they’re supposed to during class.
Other things, like security monitors and anonymous tip lines for students to report vape usage, are some practices they’ve installed too, Moses said. Efforts to educate parents and keep them in the loop have been part of that as well.
Combating the problem has become harder, though, due to the health challenges in recent years, such as with the pandemic.
State and federal agencies have stopped prioritizing youth vaping as an issue, and, in some cases, interest from the community has waned, said Amanda McLauchlin, executive director with Bay Area Alliance for Youth and Families.
The Alliance aims at building community and preventing substance use in youth, according to their website. The group works with CCISD but also has a partnership with Friendswood ISD.
“It’s almost an impossible fight—unless you can afford to put bathroom monitors in every bathroom, or take the doors off every bathroom,” McLauchlin said. “Vapes are tiny, easy to hide, and you can conceal the smoke. So there's just very few opportunities.”
Legislative efforts
In a broader effort, Elaina Polsen, chief communications officer for CCISD, said the district was a proponent of Senate Bill 21, passed in 2019, that raised the age required to buy tobacco from 18 to 21.
“Our legislative priority was to make this harder to get in kids’ hands,” Polsen said.
Another bill of note recently passed was House Bill 114, which brings with it a litany of new requirements for schools to deal with the issue.
One requirement makes it mandatory for students caught with vapes to be placed in their respective district’s disciplinary alternative education program, also known as DAEP, rather than being sent to county programs, according to the bill.
Texas House Rep. Ed Thompson, R-Pearland, who authored the bill, said the idea was to give districts more flexibility in how they handle students caught with vape pens.
Districts in recent years have sent many students through Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs, which have become “overrun,” Thompson said. The new bill aimed at opening up where districts could send students.
“There needs to be some form of consequences that goes along with what kids do,” Thompson said. “We need to fund these [disciplinary] programs better.”
That approach, though, is just one side of the discipline needed to combat the problem, McLauchlin said. She thinks programs that help with addiction are needed, she said.
Reducing the number of students using vapes will also be one that takes the community getting involved as the issue often starts outside the school.
Polsen and Moses agreed. As part of that effort, CCISD has tried to aim toward helping students recover by not just disciplining students but helping them overcome what several officials described as an addiction.
“We can't punish our way out of this. It’s an addiction,” McLauchlin said. “Adults use aids to help, and now we’re expecting a 16-year-old to quit [without help]. It's a vicious cycle.”
