City Council Considers Vaping Rules For Minors

JUVENILES WOULD GET FINE IN DISTRICT COURT

PRAIRIE GROVE — Prairie Grove’s school resource officer appealed to the City Council last week to adopt provisions that would allow the district court to fine juveniles 18 years and younger who are found guilty of violating a proposed city ordinance on vaping regulations.

“I’m asking that we look at the authority we have, the authority I have as a police officer in this town, to look at the safety and well-being of community, especially our children, and think about what we can do to try to discourage, try to prevent and try to end this issue of vaping,” said Lt. David Faulk at the council’s Oct. 21 meeting.

Council members voted to place an ordinance to adopt provisions regarding vaping on first reading, though there was opposition to the proposal.

Casey Copeland, an attorney and former Prairie Grove City Council member, said the ordinance penalizes kids for childish behavior. He said the vaping issue is not an epidemic and advised the council against taking a “kneejerk” reaction to it.

“It’s too much too fast,” Copeland said. “Let’s take some time and think about this.”

According to the ordinance, the purpose of having provisions regarding vaping is that the use of vaping or e-cigarettes by minors presents a real public health risk; juvenile courts are overwhelmed and do not have the resources to address the situation; current state law prohibits the possession and use of such products by minors.

In addition, the ordinance would allow Prairie Grove District Court to handle any violations. A minor found guilty of violating the city ordinance could be fined

from $10 to $100 (plus court costs and fees).

Vape Use On The Rise

Faulk, who is in his fifth year as a school resource officer, said he’s seen the incidences of vaping increase from a handful his first year up to about 50 cases last year. So far this year, Faulk said he’s found 20 cases of students using vaping products.

Faulk noted that e-cigarettes and vaping products are not “old school” where officers and school staff can see cigarettes and smell cigarette smoke. For example, many vaping products look like USB flash drives. They do not have a smell. A person can use an e-cigarette and blow smoke into a sweatshirt hoodie, hiding the smoke, or have a vapeless product.

“Finding it is a challenge,” Faulk said.

A major part of the problem is that vaping is growing in popularity with kids who are as young as 12 years old up to young adults in their 20s, Faulk said.

“What we’re seeing is a trend nationwide, not just Prairie Grove, but nationwide, that age group is exploding,” Faulk said, as he cited statistics about the use of e-cigarettes and reports of the dangers of using the products. In 2015, studies showed a 900% increase in the use of e-cigarettes, he said.

“What originally was a safe alternative to smoking (cigarettes) now is proving itself as worse than smoking,” Faulk said. “While our parents or grandparents smoked for 30, 40, 50 years before they started seeing the adverse effects, now we’re starting to see them in three to five years.”

That’s a real concern, Faulk said, when talking about students in the school district. Looking at national trends and numbers, it’s possible that 250 kids at the high school are using vape products, he added.

No Penalty Available

Part of the issue is that there is no penalty for it, Faulk said.

“When we catch them all I can do is to take it away.”

If caught in the school with e-cigarettes, students are given three days of in-school suspension the first offense and five days of ISS for additional offenses. It’s harder for schools to use harsher penalties, such as out of school suspension, because it then affects the students’ education, he said.

Faulk said he doesn’t want to take kids away from their classes but believes the city should have some way to penalize minors found guilty of having and using e-cigarettes.

“What I’m asking you for, is for punishment. Anything we can do to discourage someone I believe helps them to choose the right path.,” Faulk said. “We inconvenience someone through their pocketbooks so they think twice about the things they are doing.”

Proposed Ordinance

City Attorney Steven Parker told council members the city is limited in what it can do. The proposed ordinance makes it unlawful for a minor to use, possess or purchase a vaping product and to attempt to get one by displaying a false identification. It also makes it unlawful for a person to use a vaping product on school grounds or on school personal property, such as a school bus.

If a minor is found with a vaping product, police can confiscate and destroy the product.

All of these provisions mirror state law, Parker said.

Parker said he is using a conflict between two state laws for the provision that allows police to cite a minor found in violation of the ordinance in district court.

The juvenile code states that Juvenile Court has exclusive authority over juvenile criminal matters with three exceptions: traffic violations, curfew violations and game and fish violations. Parker said he did “more digging” and found another section that says district court has jurisdiction over juveniles when it comes to “traffic violations, game and fish violations, any municipal ordinance violations.”

“So there’s a conflict in the Arkansas law about what authority the district court may or may not have in juvenile court and that’s what we are exploiting,” Parker said.

Public Comments

Copeland said he did not want to argue the legality of the ordinance or the effectiveness of it.

Copeland said the most important thing for kids at this age is for them to finish school. He said he agreed with Faulk in that students shouldn’t be taken out of the classroom.

But if students are cited for violating the ordinance, they still will be taken out of the classroom to stand before the district judge, Copeland said, noting their parents also would be missing work that day.

“The parents are the ones getting punished. They are the ones who will be paying that fine,” Copeland said. “These penalties for these kids on drinking, smoking and vaping, they’re not successful because … these kids’ brains aren’t right yet. They’re going through puberty. Their brains are rewiring. There’s science on that.”

Kids are not going to care that there’s a city ordinance against vaping, Copeland said.

“They’re going to do it, regardless if there’s a penalty out there.”

Copeland asked the council to consider the bigger consequences of punishing minors for childish behavior.

“There’s other alternatives you can do other than make that parent and that kid come stand here and pay a fine and get slapped on the head as he goes out to get his next vape,” Copeland said.

Two others stood up in support of the vaping provisions.

Angie Huff, a Prairie Grove Middle School counselor, said she’s found in her 32 years of education, “You get their parent’s attention, you’ll get the child’s attention.”

In her own case, she said her son had to face Judge Graham Nations in district court.

“And I told him, do whatever you need to do because I want the behavior to stop,” Huff said. “Did I pay his ticket? uh-uh. He had to make arrangements to figure out how he was going to pay it. It was not my responsibility.”

The problem, she said, is that today many parents are not owning up to what their kids are doing so the school is having to step in and be involved in many different roles.

Betty Bartholomew said she does not have children in school anymore, but she believes punishment does help.

“When my parents punished me, I thought about what I did,” Bartholomew said, adding that kids need guidance and they need rules.

“They need structure and they need people who care enough to set those boundaries,” Bartholomew said. “We don’t have 40 years to figure this out about vaping.”

Minor Would Receive A Ticket

If the City Council approved the ordinance, Faulk was asked how it would work.

If a student is found with a vaping product on campus, the first step is to tear it apart to make sure it doesn’t have marijuana in it, Faulk said. If marijuana is not present, then the student would receive three days of ISS from the school and be ticketed by the police department. A parent would have to sign the ticket.

The student would receive an arraignment date and appear in district court for violating the ordinance on vaping provisions. If found guilty, the minor would be ordered to pay a fine. If the minor pleads not guilty, then a trial date would be set.

It’s possible, Faulk said, the minor could go to the district court office and pay the fine outright, instead of appearing in court.

The council will continue its discussion of the ordinance at its Nov. 18 meeting.

Faulk