NORTHAMPTON — Gov. Charlie Baker’s four-month ban on vaping products — declared last month in response to growing concern nationwide about the health impacts of vaping — is not stopping vaping at Northampton High School.
The ban has had some impact, senior Eleanor Harden told the School Committee at its meeting on Thursday, but “it’s not entirely preventing students from being able to get vaping products,” she said.
“They are able to go to other states, and really (they) were obtaining them illegally before, so it’s not going to prevent them from obtaining them illegally now,” she said.
Harden and student Maeve Raphael-Reily, representatives from the high school’s student union, were speaking to the School Committee about how to address vaping in the high school, which they described as a serious issue.
“Students are using spaces like the bathrooms and especially in the stalls to vape in private. That’s also creating issues with students not being able to go to the bathroom,” Raphael-Reily said.
Some students vape in the hallways and in classrooms. “Many vapers are doing so because they have become addicted, and they need nicotine to get through the day,” Harden said.
“It’s kind of surpassed just students breaking school rules,” Harden said. “It’s a health issue — they are addicted.”
Harden told the committee she was aware of nine students that have been suspended for vaping this year, a number school officials confirmed as accurate on Friday.
Some Massachusetts schools have installed vaping detectors in bathrooms in an effort to curb the problem.
“We have had discussions about vaping detectors and haven’t really been able to firmly decide whether we want to do that,” Superintendent John Provost said. “As the students point out, this is an addictive behavior and one of the things we’re learning from our colleagues who have vaping detectors installed in their schools is students can become quite adept at defeating the detectors.”
The school is also keeping bathroom doors open by using a lock, Provost said. Because of the way the room is shaped, one cannot see the areas students use from outside the bathroom, he told the Gazette on Friday. The change was made last spring, in response to student concerns about “excessive vaping in the bathrooms,” he said.
“One of the reasons why the bathroom doors are now locked open is to take away — as strange as it sounds — the sense of privacy within bathrooms,” Provost said.
In an effort to combat the issue, the student union has reached out to Tapestry and the Northampton Prevention Coalition (NPC), a group that reduces teen substance use in Northampton, and the group is creating a vaping survey to better understand what students need. Harden and Raphael-Reily said they want to focus most on education and curbing addiction.
There are posters around the high school with resources for getting help with addiction, but Harden said they are “often overlooked.”
Susan Voss, an at-large member of the committee, agreed. “I think a kid who is addicted is probably not going to look at a poster and call a number. How do we get them the help we need?” she asked the students, who said there needs to be more educational information.
“Part of the issue is they didn’t realize how dangerous it can be,” Raphael-Reily said.
Several years ago, NPC started going into the middle schools to give lessons on the dangers of vaping, the group’s coalition coordinator Ananda Lennox told the committee.
The group has also put posters in schools and ads on buses, as well as organized events for parents like a recent health expo. Data from a 2019 survey of students by NPC has not been finalized, but, Lennox said, “Preliminary data points to a 100 percent increase in past 30-day vaping rates for eighth-grade students.”
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.