As vaping among teenagers becomes a bigger concern, Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) is trying new strategies to fight back and to educate students (and their parents) about the harmful effects.

The district put together a behavioral task force last summer to assess “behaviors that were interfering with our students becoming the productive citizens that we want them to become,” according to Associate Superintendent of Student Services Jame McCall. Vaping was on the list.

“This is a nationwide problem, a health epidemic,” she says. “We're seeing it more and more on the news, about how the youth are just not understanding the dangers that are associated with vaping. And our concern isn't just for the student's health, but also for that learning environment. We want to make sure we are able to give [the students] every moment of learning opportunity that we have them for.”

Last December, TCAPS launched a pilot program with vape detectors (on loan from the manufacturer) installed in bathrooms and locker rooms at Central High School and West Senior High. The long-term plan was to expand the program to include Traverse City High School as well as the TCAPS middle schools. The pilot, however, proved unsuccessful.

“We couldn't get [the detectors] to work at the level we would need them to work,” McCall says. “I don't want to say it was a defective product, but it was a product that just didn't live up to our expectations.”

McCall says TCAPS has now implemented a multi-pronged approach: Teachers have been instructed to pay closer attention to who is in class when the bell rings, and to check the bathrooms for any dawdling pupils. The district has also standardized its punishment process to make sure students understand the consequences for vaping – both for their high school privileges and their long-term health.

In-school suspensions are standard for TCAPS students caught vaping. They incorporate educational modules meant to teach students about the dangers of e-cigarette use. McCall says there are also now extra “layers of consequence” based on a student’s activities. A student-athlete caught vaping would be required to sit out one-third of their sports season. If the student were of driving age, they would also lose on-campus parking privileges. “There are some students that use their vehicle as a storage place, and we just don't want them to have any opportunity to have that stuff available to them or their friends,” McCall explains.

At least until last week, TCAPS was looking forward to having some help from the state. In September, Governor Gretchen Whitmer directed the Department of Health and Human Services to ban the sale of flavored nicotine vaping products. The ban would have been neither a law nor the product of an executive order, but rather an emergency “administrative rule.” Once in effect, the regulation would have acted as a temporary law for six months, giving Whitmer and the legislature time to consider more permanent measures.

The temporary ban did go into effect on October 2, but was struck down last Tuesday via a preliminary injunction from Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens. The claim came from Michigan vape store owners, who sued the state arguing that the emergency rule was unfair to their businesses. Stephens agreed with the plaintiffs and ruled that the state did not have grounds to classify vaping as a public health emergency. Whitmer says she will appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court. In the meantime, flavored vapes will remain on store shelves throughout Michigan.

McCall thinks the ban is an important measure to protect kids against the health risks. Vapor inhaled via e-cigarettes can include nicotine, THC, and chemicals with sometimes unknown health effects. “We are trying to everything we can, because we see this as a very dangerous activity, and we know that our kids don’t,” McCall says. “It’s frightening, because some of our students are partaking in this activity not understanding that it's a health risk and that it could be addictive depending on what kind of chemical they're inhaling into their lungs.”

According to a 2018 National Institute on Drug Abuse study conducted at University of Michigan, 37.3 percent of 12th graders have vaped in the past 12 months, compared to 32.3 percent of 10th graders and 17.6 of 8th graders. Dr. Richard Miech, who led the study, concluded that vaping was “reversing hard-fought declines in the number of adolescents who use nicotine.”

McCall confirms that vaping is now happening at the middle school level in TCAPS, though not to the same degree as in high schools. Educating parents about the risks earlier in a child’s education, she says, is crucial to fighting against wider and wider-scale adoption. TCAPS now incorporates parent vape awareness as part of its open houses.

“I think the more awareness we can provide to parents on this, the better,” McCall says.

“Some of these vape devices are so small and inconspicuous that a parent who doesn't really engage in the world of vaping won't even know what they are when they look at them. Some of them look like flash drives. And then the smells are all different too, so they’re hard to detect.”