These strategies are comprehensive, and they demand a lot of resources. The district holds seminars for parents and teachers, and it hired extra deans to focus on student wellness and included information about ecigarettes in school curricula. “The most impactful has been the education piece,” says Stepenosky. So far they’ve conducted over 250 operations complete with undercover officers and marked bills.īut the most important element hasn’t been the sting operations, the crackdowns on local retailers, or the detectors. The school even partners with law enforcement to run sting operations on businesses in the community that sell ecigarettes to minors. The school dispatched administrators to nearby gas stations, grocery stores, and convenience stores to remind people not to sell ecigarettes to kids under 21.
When students are caught vaping, they’re sent to a 90-minute meeting with their parents and an addiction counselor. But he combines the detectors with other measures. They work,” says superintendent Dan Stepenosky.
#Take a break vapes install#
In October 2018, Las Virgenes spent half of its grant, some $50,000, to install Flysense detectors at its two high schools and three middle schools. One of those districts was Las Virgenes Unified, which serves around 11,500 students northwest of Los Angeles. Peterson agrees and is already getting in on the education angle, offering a #NoVaping package that includes brochures, posters, and suggestions for class presentations.īetween 20, the California Department of Justice distributed more than $12 million to California school districts trying to deter vaping through a number of measures including installing detectors, hiring school resource officers, and running educational programs. Vape detectors might help catch offending kids so they can be punished, she says, but “if the goal is to prevent and stop, vape detectors are not the way to go.” It’s important for schools to analyze their goals, says Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a developmental psychologist at Stanford who studies teen vaping. The problem is that detectors alone can’t change students’ behavior. “There’s no sensing that could ever change the laws of physics.” “There’s nothing we can do about that,” says Peterson. They exhale into the toilet and flush, creating a vacuum that sucks the aerosol into the pipes. Other kids resort to AP physics–level subterfuge. Some exhale into their backpacks or sleeves, where the aerosol dissipates before wafting up to the detector. Most schools say they do sense the vapor and that they’ve caught students because of them. The sensors are chemical detectors that go off when the levels of certain chemicals in the room change. They don’t even record video or audio-they just register the chemical signature of vaping aerosol, then send an email or text alert to school officials. Like smoke detectors, vape detectors are relatively unintrusive.
So schools across the country are spending thousands of dollars to outfit their campuses with vaping detectors, only to find that the devices can’t stand up to wily teens and that policing student behavior isn’t the same as permanently changing it. A recent study found that 28 percent of high schoolers and 11 percent of middle schoolers frequently vape. And the detectors? Students simply ripped them off the walls.Įcigarettes, which are easy to conceal and, until recently, came in a dazzling array of sweet, fruity, and dessert flavors, are hugely popular among teenagers. Administrators tried making students take online courses if they were caught with ecigarettes they talked to law enforcement the Village of Hinsdale even passed an ordinance that would make it easier for officers to ticket minors caught with the devices. About 20 miles southwest of Chicago, Hinsdale Central has been battling on-campus vaping for years. Last spring, students at Hinsdale Central High School discovered six vaping detectors in bathrooms and locker rooms around campus.
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