This article was written by Keegan Breuker
As one walks into the bathroom, a metallic tang mixed with the stench of cotton candy lingers in the air. Four feet are seen awkwardly sharing a lone stall. Behold, the problem of vaping plaguing school bathrooms.
Underage vaping in public schools creates a large issue for many reasons. It’s irritating for students just trying to use the bathroom as the lines pile up. Not to mention, the health risk that surfaces as a result of this issue for our students. Vaping is detrimental for teen physical growth and development. Vaping during school also leads to negative consequences and learning hindrances for students. Laziness, trouble focusing, and distractedness are key factors exhibited by students vaping during the school day. Along with this, vaping is illegal in Michigan until you are age 21 or older, making this a legal issue on top of general annoyance. Vaping in school bathrooms has increasingly become a more frustrating issue, and a change needs to be made.
A major factor many don’t consider when conversating about vaping in the school bathrooms is the health risk faced as a result of inhaling nicotine daily. At the end of the day, there is no safety in vaping. Especially with the addictive qualities of nicotine and additional ingredients in vape car. This issue affects more than just the comfort and safety of students using school bathrooms. According to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), it affects young people’s health and damages their body for a lifetime. Drawing awareness to the underlying issue of teenage addiction is the first step to ensuring this epidemic does not continue.
According to Stanford Children Health, our teenage brains are wired much differently, and addiction can occur at a much more rapid pace compared to the adult brain. Seeing my peers get addicted to such harsh substances is truly heartbreaking, and witnessing it happening in real time in the bathrooms makes it much more real and difficult to deal with due to the severity of the matter.
Senior Allison Hale is a smart woman. One of her favorite subjects is biology, and with her knowledge on human health, teenage vaping is very anxiety-inducing.
“As an upcoming biology major, I am desperately worried about my peer’s health,” Hale said.
Hale has a strong opinion on the people that she encounters daily in the school bathrooms.
“Vaping in school bathrooms is something I walk into every day. And it’s nasty. I can smell that stuff. It’s a disgrace,” Hale said.
Math teacher and former girls basketball coach Sarah Snyder has ideas on why students choose to vape when each and every one of these students know it’s bad for them both physically and emotionally.
“It could be that somebody is trying to figure themselves out and they’re in this weird stage where their frontal cortex isn’t completely developed, and so they make these decisions that at the the time think is good, but it’s not,” Snyder said.
Frustrations and their subsequent lack of solution hits both students and teachers in the realm of vaping. Teachers often feel powerless in preventing vaping.
“So the tough part is at the school level, we physically have to see them do it or have it [a vape in hand] in order to like suspect them of doing it,” Snyder said.
Overall, change is possible. If we can come together as a school we will be able to create a solution that will benefit these young students, but that change cannot happen without the help of students, staff, and all who care about this matter. An idea for progress could be implementing a better policy regarding what teachers can and cannot call out. Or the high school could help by having a staff member stand in the bathrooms in the morning and during passing times in effort to lower the amount of students choosing to negatively affect the health of both themselves and others by vaping in school.
Leave a Reply