How East should deal with the vaping issue

Vaping has become an epidemic in high schools across the country. With vaping companies targeting teenagers using a variety of flavors and colors, students are now more prone to vaping than ever.
The school district as a whole has taken this on headfirst and incorporated the recent vaping problem into the preexisting anti-smoking curriculum. Students are now taught the dangers of all kinds of nicotine products in nearly every health class they take, spanning from elementary school through high school.
“It was really drilled into us that any kind of nicotine products are really bad for us,” said Prisha Mathur (‘25), “the schools show us a lot of pictures of messed-up lungs, which freaks most people out.”
In the end, the best way to keep teenagers from vaping in school is to prevent it. No matter what efforts the school makes, from locking the bathroom doors between classes to penalizing students found with vapes, none of it could be as effective as keeping those students from vaping in the first place.
Recognizing this, the middle and high schools in the district have recently started to take on a more direct approach to the student vaping crisis. Teachers are instructed to show students the “real truth” of smoking and vaping by presenting pictures, videos, and medical reports about young teenagers who vaped and will never recover.
“It’s scary to see these kids our age who made one mistake, and now their quality of life can never be as good as it once was,” said Mathur, “but it scares a lot of us into being smart enough not to do it.”
Students across Cherry Hill High School East share this opinion. The images and videos shown in health classes may be disturbing, but they are leading many teenagers to a path of staying vape-free and healthy.