‘Literally everyone vapes’
After news of lung illness linked to using e-cigarettes with nicotine or vaping THC, schools rush to warn students of dangers
In Alabama, a school removed the doors from bathroom stalls to stop students from sneaking inside to vape. In Colorado, a school decided to forfeit a school volleyball game after finding “widespread vaping” and other infractions by the team. And in Pennsylvania, at a school where administrators have tried installing sensors to detect vaping in bathrooms and locker rooms, students caught with vape devices face a $50 fine and a three-day suspension.
At least 530 people have been sickened by mysterious lung illnesses related to using e-cigarettes with nicotine or vaping THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and at least eight have died. That has sent high schools, the epicenters of youth vaping, racing to give teenagers a new, urgent message: Vaping can be deadly.
Federal health officials have yet to pinpoint an exact cause of the recent illnesses, but the alarming pattern has put principals and teachers into crisis mode. They are holding assemblies to warn students about the dangers. They are getting creative with rules to make it harder for students to secretly vape in school bathrooms, hallways and even classrooms. They are trying to train parents and teachers on the wide array of vape devices, which look like pens or flash drives and which many adults do not recognize.
During an assembly at one suburban Chicago high school this week, hundreds of students, many dressed in school colors of orange and black in honor of homecoming, saw an X-ray image of a young man’s lungs, cloudy and damaged, on an auditorium screen.
He had recently been hospitalized after vaping and placed in a medically induced coma for a week, a substance-abuse consultant told the students from a stage.
“His lungs are now that of a 70-year-old. He’s in his 20s,” the consultant, Ashleigh Nowakowski, said. “Can you imagine how that’s going to affect the rest of his life? He can’t run. He can’t play sports.”
The students watched solemnly. A few squirmed in their seats.
Administrators at U.S. high schools have long tried to warn students about the risks of vaping, which gained popularity several years ago as an alternative to cigarettes and works by heating liquid and turning it into vapor to be inhaled. But the outbreak of illnesses has brought new level of urgency and attention to the issue. Students who had brushed off the warnings in the past, saying that vaping was relatively harmless, can no longer do so.
But after the assembly, at Crystal Lake Central High School, 45 miles northwest of Chicago, some students said they were skeptical that vaping was as dangerous as the presentation suggested.
The students told of a high school ecosystem where vaping devices are easily obtained, and refill cartridges with THC oil, known as carts, are sold for $20 apiece. It is not uncommon, these students said, for seniors to sell vape pens to freshmen eager to take up vaping.
Opportunities to vape discreetly are everywhere, they said — in an empty hallway, a bathroom stall or the back row of a classroom where a teacher cannot possibly monitor every student’s move. Older students said they tended to leave campus for lunch, vaping in their cars along the way.
“It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t do it,” said Alexis Padilla, 16, a junior. “You can’t go on social media without someone’s videos of them doing it.”
Last week, the Trump administration said it planned to ban most flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pods, an attempt to curtail use among teenagers. States tend to regulate e-cigarettes like other nicotine products, and laws vary from state to state. At least a dozen states have passed laws restricting sales of e-cigarettes to young people; in Illinois, Arkansas and other states, the legal age for purchasing nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, is 21. In Texas, minors can be fined for possessing e-cigarettes.
But many teenagers sidestep the age restrictions by buying e-cigarettes online or from friends.
Alcohol is still widely consumed among teenagers, they said. But “vaping is the big thing,” said Nyanan Bey, 17, a senior.
One student openly laughed when she heard a widely cited statistic from the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey
that estimated 1 in 4 youths between the ages of 12 and 17 have tried vaping nicotine or THC at least once.
“Yeah, that’s too low,” she said. “Literally everyone vapes.”
Health officials suspect that vaping-related illnesses and deaths are underreported, and that doctors have only recently begun to connect vaping to mysterious lung ailments.
And educators said they are beginning to grapple with the reality that a new generation of American teenagers, who would be loath to pick up cigarettes, are now addicted to nicotine through vaping.
There is nothing out of the ordinary about the students at Crystal Lake Central, a school of 1,500 students, said Steve Greiner, student services coordinator.
“The kids in our school are like any other school,” he said. “People are really starting to realize, ‘Holy cow, this was seen as the answer to our prayers to get people off cigarettes.’ Now it’s turned into this.”
In Crystal Lake, the typical response to a student caught vaping is counseling and other efforts to provide information about the dangers. Some schools have tried vaping support groups.
At Nerinx Hall, an all-girls Catholic school in the
St. Louis area, students are planning a peer-driven “amnesty week,” where they hope to make an “emotional appeal” to one another and offer a chance to dump vaping equipment at a secure drop-off location, said Meta Stephens, the senior class treasurer.
“We really want it to be no pressure: You will not get in trouble for this,” said Stephens, 17, who is helping plan the event this fall. “We really just want to help you stop if you want to.”