Local school officials say e-cigarette use remains a problem

Jan. 30—Sorry, Mötley Crüe, smokin' in the boys' room is going the way of the dodo. These days, students are vaping.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration's analysis of the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey, 10% of respondents in U.S. middle schools (sixth-eighth grade) and high schools (ninth-12th grade) reported current use of tobacco products, and 7.7% of the respondents used e-cigarettes, making them far and away the most commonly used tobacco product.

Ten percent of high school respondents currently used e-cigarettes, down from 14.1% in 2022.

"In 2023, among students reporting current e-cigarette use, 89.4% used flavored products and 25.2% used an e-cigarette daily," the analysis reads.

In Mississippi, 21.3% of high schoolers and 8.6% of middle schoolers were using e-cigarettes in 2019, according to the 2020 Mississippi Youth Tobacco Survey. That was up from 1.2% and 0.6%, respectively, in 2010.

And in Tupelo and Lee County, school administrators can confirm that local students are following the state and national trends.

Vaping a 'growing issue'

Vaping is "a growing issue, not only in our high schools, also in our (middle and) elementary schools," said Coke Magee, the Lee County School District superintendent.

And while instances of students vaping in elementary schools have been exceedingly rare, vaping has become fairly common in Lee County middle and high schools. The Tupelo Public School District is facing the same problem.

"The last three years, we've seen an increase in vaping," and the 2023-24 school year has had the highest number of infractions so far, Tupelo High School Principal Melissa Thomas said of her campus.

Tupelo Middle School Principal Mark Enis said he first encountered students vaping in 2017 at THS, when he was an assistant principal there. Pat Comer, the Mooreville Middle School principal, said he first started noticing students vaping in 2016 or 2017.

Notably, the Juul e-cigarette was first launched in the U.S. in 2015, and Comer remembers it as partially instigating e-cigarette popularity among students.

"The different flavors that are offered are really attractive to the kids," Comer said. "The packaging on the vapes is really attractive to the kids. They just think it's cool."

"When we first kind of were exposed to vapes, it looks like a USB drive," Enis said. The CDC and FDA analysis reported Juul e-cigarettes being among the most popular brands reportedly used by middle and high school students.

School officials say e-cigarettes have truly conquered traditional smoking in local schools.

"We haven't taken up a can of Skoal or a pack of cigarettes in probably — gosh — seven, eight, nine years," Comer said.

Mooreville High School Principal Kevin Long agreed that the number of students they catch smoking traditional cigarettes has fallen.

"This is my fifth year in administration, first year as principal, and we have not had a single conventional smoking incident that I can recall," Long said.

And it's not any subgroup of students that's vaping. While Enis told the Daily Journal that TMS catches more boys than girls vaping, all the school administrators quoted in this story agreed vaping is an issue among every student demographic.

It's "anybody and everybody," Enis said.

"And I do feel like it's a lot more (students) than most people realize," Magee said.

Ease of access

When Enis and his staff ask students caught with e-cigarettes where they got the devices, they receive several answers. Some students say they swiped e-cigarettes from parents or grandparents, while others claim a store sold them the e-cigarettes. Still others report other students shared the e-cigarettes with them.

Every school administrator quoted in this story said there had been reports or confirmed instances of students selling e-cigarettes to each other, but those reports and instances were few. Sharing, it seems, is much more common.

At MHS, some students caught with e-cigarettes have claimed that a relative bought the devices for them, but most refuse to say where they got their devices, Long said.

"Sometimes, they're getting it from high school students; sometimes, they're getting it from just people in the community going in and buying it (and selling to the kids); and sometimes, they're just walking into stores, and stores are selling to them."

In this way, students vaping is really a community problem. And not only because community members are helping middle and high school students access e-cigarettes. The Mississippi Department of health reported that about 4.6% of adult respondents in Mississippi were currently using e-cigarettes in 2020. Among 18- to 25-year-olds, that number is 13.5%.

"Schools reflect society," Magee said. "And in this instance, that's unfortunate."

Not just nicotine

Of course, nicotine — the principal psychoactive compound in tobacco products — isn't the only drug available via e-cigarettes. There are THC vape pens as well. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the principal psychoactive product in marijuana.

While THC vape pens — and marijuana more generally — do crop up in local schools from time to time, all the school administrators quoted in this story said instances of THC use on campus were a good deal less common than nicotine vaping.

And while the school administrations handle cases with nicotine e-cigarettes, if they suspect there's THC involved, the school resource officers take over. Consequences for THC product use are more severe than for nicotine product use, as well. In the LCSD, THC use lands students in alternative school immediately.

Handling the problem

Since vaping among students has grown more prevalent in recent years, Tupelo and Lee County school administrators have had to find ways to deal with it.

The consequences of getting caught are one deterrent. TMS and the LCSD have both made punishments for vaping harsher in recent years.

At TMS, the punishment for a first-time nicotine vaping infraction used to be three days of out-of-school suspension, Enis said. Now, the first-time infraction punishment is five days of OSS. The second offense earns 10 days of OSS, and the third offense is a recommendation for alternative school.

In the LCSD, the first offense in a calendar year gets you three days of in-school suspension, the second gets you three days of OSS, and the third gets you 30-45 days of alternative school, Long and Comer said.

The punishments for being caught selling e-cigarettes, as well as selling or possessing THC products, are more severe.

Students' parents are informed when students are caught with e-cigarettes as well, and that's a deterrent in itself. And parents tend to be very supportive of schools taking action to punish e-cigarette use, Enis said. Repeat offenders are rare.

But how do school administrators and teachers catch students with e-cigarettes in the first place?

Two years ago, the LCSD installed vape detectors in its bathrooms. Since bathrooms are secluded and there are no cameras in them, it's one of the most common places for students to vape, just like it used to be one of the most common places for students to smoke cigarettes.

With the vape detectors, school administrators get alerts on their cellphones when e-cigarette vapor is detected, and they can go straight to the bathroom in question to check for students vaping. And if the students have left the bathroom by the time they arrive, the administrators can check the cameras that cover the hallways outside of the bathrooms to see who went in and out around the time that the detector pinged. The vape detectors also detect loud noises, so the administrators can catch school fights the same way.

E-cigarettes contain metal, so LCSD schools have metal-detector wands they use to check suspect students for vape pens.

While determined students find ways around vape detectors, Comer believes the number of students vaping in MMS has dropped significantly since the detectors were installed.

At the time he was interviewed in late December, Comer said he hadn't caught a student with a vape pen in weeks. A couple of years ago, he was catching two per week.

Magee said he believes the tactics are working.

"I do feel like our efforts have had a positive effect" in encouraging our students not to bring e-cigarettes on campus, he said.

TMS and THS do not have vape detectors — TPSD did a trial run with vape detectors, but the noise-detecting feature was pinging administrators' cellphones repeatedly at 2 a.m, Enis said.

Still, TPSD schools have a similar system to the LCSD. If there's vaping suspected in a bathroom, administrators can check the cameras outside to see who went in and out, and they have metal-detector wands to check for e-cigarettes hidden on students.

"Usually, if we're searching, we have a good idea it's gonna be on them," Enis said. "We don't just randomly search kids."

Catching students with e-cigarettes and enforcing consequences aside, local schools are also trying to educate students in order to forestall student vaping.

The schools hold assemblies and courses to inform students not only of the punitive consequences for vaping, but also of the medical risks.

"These kids are putting chemicals in their body that they don't really even have an idea of how it'll impact them down the road," Enis said. "These kids are 12 and 13 years old — they shouldn't be exposed to that."

Enis commented on his own position as a father:

"I have a 13-year-old, and just knowing the dangers that are involved ... it's just concerning as a parent, not just as a principal," he said.

School officials know that educating students on the dangers of vaping, as well as preventing them from getting access to e-cigarettes, is a group effort. No one teacher, or punishment or assembly is going to stop e-cigarette use among students.

"It's going to take all of us — those of us at school and parents at home and community leaders, all of us working together," Thomas said. "The more we educate our students and the more we provide them information about taking care of themselves, then the better we'll (deal) with this issue."

Addie covers education and general news for the Daily Journal. Contact her at addie.davis@journalinc.com.