Wake has had more than 1000% increase in student e-cig use. What’s the response?
Hundreds of Wake County students were caught with e-cigarettes during the 2018-19 school year, resulting in more than a 1,000 percent increase in violations since the 2016-17 school year.
The Wake County school system reported 45 incidents of students caught with e-cigarettes in the 2016-17 school year, and 526 in the 2018-19 school year. With national, statewide and local statistics all showing booming rates of teen e-cigarette usage, Wake County school officials and health advocates say students must learn about the health risks of vaping.
“The adolescent brain is still developing, so when you introduce an addictive substance into the brain it actually rewires the brain a little bit,” Virginia Johnson, substance use prevention director at the Poe Center for Health Education in Raleigh, said in an interview Monday. “It (e-cigarettes) makes addiction to nicotine a lot easier. When teens use e-cigs they’re more likely to become addicted.”
In August, the Wake County School Health Advisory Council recommended that the school district do more to inform student, staff and the community about the health risks of using e-cigarettes. School officials will provide a response on Tuesday, including steps such as mandatory new health lessons that students will take about e-cigarettes.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that provide users with aerosol puffs that typically contain nicotine and sometimes flavorings like fruit, mint or chocolate.
North Carolina filed a lawsuit in May against JUUL, the nation’s biggest e-cigarette company, over allegations that it marketed its products to minors and also lied to consumers of all ages about safety, the News & Observer previously reported.
The lawsuit comes at a time when a statewide health survey found that e-cigarette usage increased 894% among high school students and 430% among middle school students between 2011 and 2017.
E-cigarette use an epidemic among teens
Teen smoking rates had been declining before the advent of e-cigarettes. Johnson said the nicotine levels in e-cigarettes are so high that parents have called the Poe Center asking for advice because their kids can’t quit.
“It’s an epidemic that’s happening that is having health concerns,” said Johnson, the parent of a high school student.
Part of the reason, some Wake teens warned, is that school employees don’t recognize what e-cigarette devices look like.
Wake is now providing resources from the Catch My Breath program and Stanford University’s School of Medicine Tobacco Prevention Toolkit that can be used by any teacher. The district’s Communications Office will launch a new campaign in January promoting the resources.
New mandatory e-cigarette lessons will soon be part of Wake middle and high school health education classes. Brian Glendenning, Wake’s senior administrator for healthful living, said Monday the classes will start in February.
For more than a decade, Wake schools have posted “tobacco-free” signs. Glendenning said new signs that add a ban on e-cigarettes will be distributed to schools.
Wake also agreed to participate this year in the N.C. Youth Tobacco Survey, a statewide survey conducted every two years. The district had opted not to participate in 2017, saying it was taking away from instructional time.
Wake will continue to participate in the Poe Center’s annual Tobacco-Free Community Forum. The first forum was held in May.
“Just as this is a concern across the nation, e-cigarette usage is a major concern for WCPSS as we are seeing evidence of rising usage,” Glendenning said in an email Monday.
The Wake County PTA Council has been working with the School Health Advisory Council and the Wake County Health Department to educate people about the dangers of e-cigarettes. But PTA leaders said it will also take policy changes such as banning e-cigarette flavors and raising taxes on e-cigs to be on par with traditional tobacco taxes.
“Aggressive policy changes at the state level are needed,” the Wake PTA Council said in a statement. “Our districts, counties, and schools are pre-empted from doing things unless we address these issues on a larger scale. While all of the topics presented are excellent, they are just a ‘band-aid’ on the actual problem.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
