Vaping On HHS Campus: You’d Be Surprised At What I Discovered

 Does HHS campus have a vaping problem? I believe it does. Should we be paying attention to vaping on campus? I think we should. Oftentimes, students can be seen smoking during school hours–not just outside, but in class too.

I asked 12 HHS students, “If you had to estimate, how many students out of 100 carry vapes?” They all thought 70-90% of students at HHS carry vapes. This, of course, is not scientific data. In fact, these statistics seem highly unlikely. However, we often see things that teachers and administrators do not. The bathroom, for example, is a hot spot, specifically because adults don’t go in. It wouldn’t be a surprise if a student wandered into a bathroom at any time of the day and encountered a group of other students vaping.

I interviewed a few HHS students at length about this ongoing problem.  As a condition of being interviewed, they requested anonymity. One HHS Junior described smoking on campus as, “looking dumb smoking in front of everybody.” Another HHS Sophomore said something similar. He said, “They look goofy.” They both agree that vaping on campus does not make you look cool, but instead makes you look foolish.

It appears that students are more willing to try vaping on campus this year than last year. I asked my interviewees if they had a solution that might help with this problem. Another HHS Junior said, “Go up to them and confiscate their devices and require the school staff to confiscate the items if seen.” Another 10th grader stated, that staff and admin needed “to create harsh punishments/consequences after being caught.” Ideas like this might help resolve our campus’s vaping problem.

 It seems like rules that seem less important are being enforced like the no hat policy on campus rather than the smoking. More efforts are going towards rules that seem more irrelevant rather than focusing on the bigger problems. 

Statistics show that 14.1% of students in high school smoke/vape. Although the problem of smoking is on the rise, there are programs here at HHS that can inform you about the hazards and health risks smoking brings. If you are interested in finding out more about underage vaping, contact [email protected].