Secondhand smoke: the other effects of vaping in schools
How BHS students feel about bathroom vapers
A freshman walked into the bathroom on her first day at BHS and came face to face with four girls huddling in a group with smoke coming out of their faces. That was her first impression of a BHS bathroom.
Chyanne MacKenzie ‘25 avoids the girls restroom during five-minute passing time because vapers overrun the bathroom. MacKenzie has to hold off on personal things so these girls can finish hitting their vapes.
“I am never able to find time to use the bathroom during passing time,” said MacKenzie. “There are so many girls just sitting in the stalls vaping, taking up the whole passing time. Usually it’s fine and I can wait, but when I’ve already had to wait through my last hour to go it becomes an issue.”
For the students who vape, they find that vapes are a necessary part of a day at school. Some say that they use easy-access E-Cigarettes to calm them down and prepare them for upcoming assignments and tests.
One senior said, “When I do it at school, it is most likely because I have a test or a stressful class coming up and I use it to calm me down. That’s all I need it for, but some kids can’t last more than eight hours without it.”
According to Results from the Annual National Youth Tobacco Survey | FDA, “More than 1 in 4 (25.2%) of current youth e-cigarette users use an e-cigarette product every day.”
Another student at BHS says, “Every time I go to the bathroom there always tends to be a group of 4 or 5 girls. It has even caused the administration to hang up signs on the bathroom stalls telling the students to only have one person in a stall at a time.”
Administration has recently added a vape detector that functions similar to a smoke detector to some bathrooms. With the new laws regarding smoking, the BHS school officer doesn’t deal or withhold information about kids under 21 vaping.
To reduce the number of students vaping at school, Assistant Principal Ed Cox said, “We’ve just been experimenting the most with students in the bathroom. We recently have been trying out smoke/chemical detectors. We get a notification every time a chemical is detected in the bathroom.”
Whether it is vaping itself or encountering awkward experiences in the bathroom, most high schools struggle with students vaping. Administrations are putting in effort to prevent this issue. Not only is it affecting the students but the staff too.
