Copper Hills High School students ran around the school building through clouds of bubbles as part of the May 17 “Blow Bubbles, Not Smoke” bubble run sponsored by the school’s nicotine prevention plan committee in an effort to promote a vape/substance-free school.

“I’d much rather walk into a bathroom having people blow bubbles instead of smoke,” one participant said.

Many students report vaping as “a big problem” in school bathrooms.

Jordan District Student Support Services Consultant Sharon Jensen said while 7% of Utah students in a self-reporting survey said they vape, the problem affects all students.

“Where's that 7% going so they can't get caught? Into the bathroom,” Jensen said. “Well, 100% of kids have to use the bathroom, and so when the 7% of kids are in there trying to vape on their bathroom break, to all of the 93% of the kids who don't vape, it just seems like someone's in there vaping every single time they're trying to use the bathroom.”

 Jensen’s department encouraged secondary school staffs to come up with preventative solutions to the growing vaping problem. In response, CHHS’s prevention committee applied for a grant to fund school-wide activities, such as the bubble run, as part of an ongoing anti-vaping campaign.

“As a school, district, and nationwide, we've seen a drastic increase in youth using substances both in and outside of school,” CHHS Psychologist Naomi Varuso said. “With the increase in substance use, and students having substance-related offenses at school, we saw a need to implement further prevention and intervention initiatives to meet this need in our community.”

The committee hopes to increase awareness of the dangers of vaping in the school, district and community with posters and activities throughout the next school year. CHHS psychologists are looking into forming student groups for struggling students to get support and to learn about alternatives to using alcohol and drugs.

CHHS Psychologist Dustin Fullmer said psychologist-run groups could help students get to the root of their substance abuse problems.

“It stems from a lot more than just wanting to use it,” Fullmer said. “There’s usually a lot of emotional/mental health kind of stuff behind it as well.” 

CHHS’s prevention committee invited students to join the prevention efforts by creating anti-vaping, smoking and drinking videos as part of a video contest. Thirty videos were submitted which highlighted problems of substance abuse and suggested healthy alternatives.

One student said,  “Mine was about the anxiety you get from friends, from yourself and parents. Hiding it is not good, it just makes you want to smoke more.”

Another said, “Mine was more about the social aspect of it and how we can lose friends from it.”

 The winning videos were shown to the student body and, according to one student, had an impact.

“One of my friends said it made him rethink his smoking,” he said.

Jensen was impressed with the quality of the videos and will be utilizing some of them as an educational resource for JSD students and families as part of the district’s prevention through education. Other measures include a Substance Abuse Family Education class offered at The Jordan Family Education Center, and a unit on substance abuse in eighth and tenth grade health classes.

Vaping detectors have been installed in some school bathrooms but it is an expensive solution which will take time to implement at all secondary schools, Jensen said.

One CHHS student, who has smoked and vaped, believes that education is a better way to address the problem than an invasive solution such as checking students’ bags for e-cigarettes.

“More like awareness of what it can do,” he said.

Jensen said parents play an integral part in substance abuse prevention.

“Especially as our young students begin to enter high school, you want to have conversations,” Jensen said. “The research is clear that if we are having steady and regular conversations about our values, then the young people in our families are much, much more likely to follow them. We can't just assume they're going to read our mind. We have to just verbally put it out there again and again.”

She recommends parents explore ParentsEmpowered.org and BeVapeFree.org for help with talking to their kids about the dangers of vaping, nicotine, marajuana and alcohol. λ