The vaping rate for teens in Idaho is 21.5 percent, according to Truth Initiative. Common side effects are dry mouth, coughing, headaches and nausea. Vaping can affect not only your mental health but can also affect your education.
This is because vaping can make you not have the ability to focus due to cravings. You sit there watching the clock waiting till your next hit. I’ve seen what addiction can do to people and it is not pretty.
Vaping at Lakeland High School is quite a problem, but it is just a problem for teens in general. This is because it is seen as a cool thing to do. John Hatcher said that when he talks to the middle schoolers about it, they say they have started as early as seventh grade.
You do it once to impress your friends and the next thing you know, you cannot live without it.
With vaping being an issue here, the administration was able to file for a grant to get the Halo Smart Sensors installed in our school.
It detects THC, vaping and loud noises.
The loud noises come into play because they help detect fights or someone falling unconscious.
They are located in all bathrooms, locker rooms, and even some in the ceiling tiles that are not visible to the students.
It is such an issue that Hatcher collects one to six vapes daily.
The fine for being in possession as a minor is $74. However, if you distribute, it automatically becomes $200.
Distribution is when a minor hands a substance to another minor. That is a two hundred dollar fee for just handing it to a friend, and that is on top of the seventy-four dollar fine due to vaping underage.
It may be fun at the moment, and it may make all your problems go away for a short period, but it also has adverse long-term effects as well.
It can harm brain development, which continues until the age of 25. It also can increase future addiction to other drugs. It damages the neuropathways in your brain. So, when you get a nicotine buzz frequently, it creates neuropathways for that and destroys the ones that you actually need.
“The first thing that goes through my head is, how many people have died from cigarette smoking in a year? Nobody. But, people have died from vaping in a year. They get popcorn lung and die,” Tim Keifer said.
Popcorn lung is the scarring of air sacs in the lungs that causes the thickening of the airway. It makes breathing much more difficult.
It is also easy to hide and so easy to vape in general. That is where the new vape sensors come into play. They will now help administrators find the kids and help them get on the right path.
“I think the more we can do to help kids accountable, the better,” Keifer said.
Drug testing in school is a way to hold these kids accountable for what they are doing. There needs to be more frequent drug tests, and shouldn’t just be a random thing. I think everyone should have to take one. Athlete or not. If we test more people, that means more people are more likely to be caught.
It can harm brain development, which continues until the age of twenty-five. It also can increase future addiction to other drugs.
When you are younger, your brain is forming neural pathways. Your brain is developing very rapidly, and so when you put nicotine or THC into your brain at a young age, you are altering the development of your brain in a way that has ramifications for the rest of your life. At that time, you may not know what or how you are altering it but later you will.
Vaping is surely to negatively impact you down the road, whether or not you realize it.
Your brain not only has the power to build neural pathways but also destroy them. The neural pathways that your brain builds are the ones you use more frequently.
“You have a time in your life when your brain is very active and developing. Why put a bunch of crap in there and destroy it,” Keifer said.
Newer teachers at LHS are excited for the motivation to prevent vaping in school.
“Me being relatively new to Lakeland, it is refreshing to see a school that does the random drug testing, and they have a no vape policy but, unfortunately, everywhere that I’ve been, it’s been fairly liberal and not that frowned upon,” Mike Shroeder said.
People think it is a better source of nicotine than a cigarette and that it is better for you but, it is so much worse.
“The Vape detectors would be awesome, and they are totally necessary right now,” Matthew Greene said.
Vaping puts metal into your lungs, and it will eventually kill you. Now, smoking a regular cigarette can kill you, too but not as fast as a vape can. According to Embark Behavior Health, it states that vaping is more harmful due to chemicals being put into your lungs which is a reason that it kills you faster. Although it may be cheaper, just don’t do it. Not smoking, vaping, drugs any of it. Protect your health and do not become a part of that 21.5 percent.
