Giving Compass' Take:

• Punitive measures to deter teen vaping aren't working. Naaz Modan explores effective alternatives to prevent and stop the practice.

• How can funders best support the development and implementation of vaping prevention strategies? 

• Learn how vaping is interfering with progress in smoking among teens


Students are vaping — in school bathrooms, between classes and after school — and at the crux of the crisis is the spread of misinformation.

An Illinois district filed a lawsuit against Juul Labs, a leading e-cigarette company that holds more than 75% of the market, for allegedly glamorizing the product on social media to market to teens and young adults. What was meant to be a harm-reduction alternative for adults addicted to nicotine is becoming increasingly popular among teens, and school administrators now face the dilemma of how to discipline students and address misinformation.

According to a survey conducted by the CDC in 2017, 42.2% of students have used an electronic vapor product. Superintendent Mikkel Storaasli of Grayslake Community High School District 127 in Illinois said that while districts are now witnessing an “explosion” of vaping, administrators should avoid punitive disciplinary responses and alternatively respond through an educational lens.

“Simply punitive measures don’t do a whole lot,” Storaasli said. “We want to start conversations with students and parents instead.”

Elizabeth D’Amico, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corp. and a licensed clinical psychologist, agrees detention and zero-tolerance policies, which some districts have put in place as a response to vaping, do not serve as a good deterrent or intervention. “Teens will find a way to do it and brush off the detention,” she noted.

Implementing early prevention and later intervention techniques — like establishing afterschool programs, incorporating it into a comprehensive health education curriculum beginning in middle school, and educating school staff and parents on its use and effects — could yield better results.

According to Jeanie Alter, executive director of the American School Health Association (ASHA), evidence-based prevention programs are shown to work. D’Amico suggested part of the prevention and intervention approach should include providing normative feedback, which gives students a better idea of the bigger picture.

“Teens tend to overestimate how many other teens are actually using, whether it’s e-cigarettes, marijuana or alcohol,” she explained. “In reality, the rates of teen usage are much much lower.”

Any health curriculum or after-school program, she said, must include demonstrating to students through statistics that not vaping is more common than doing so, which could normalize abstinence.

Read the full article about preventing teen vaping by Naaz Modan at Education Dive.