Like many schools across the country, Frederick County Public Schools (FCPS) faces a huge problem with students vaping at school.
Linganore High School (LHS) regularly sees students who use bathrooms as their school as a “smoking spot.” Students congregating in bathrooms has lead to collateral damage, namely the regular vandalism of both boys’ and girls’ bathrooms.
LHS Coordinator of Athletics & Facilities Howard Putterman said, “The important message is that the vandalism hurts the custodians who we all know and love and not as much the AP [assistant principal].”
At various times during the 2023-2024 school year, LHS has consequently limited the number of open bathrooms and restricted use of bathrooms during certain times to help prevent and address vandalism and vaping; however, restricting bathrooms can impact the rest of the students who do not vape in some of the same ways large groups of students vaping in the bathroom does.
Like many LHS students, senior Sarah Vendemia believes that students vaping in the bathroom and the sometimes resulting bathroom closures due to vandalism both negatively impact students.
“When they take up all the stalls, it makes me late to class, which prevents me from doing work and makes me ask for more instruction,” Vendemia said.
Despite having a valid reason for closing bathrooms, Linganore High School junior Camryn Lesser agrees that doing so has unintended consequences like taking away from learning.
“Restricting the bathroom takes away from the amount of time I have in class,” Lesser said. “Some of my classes are very far from the open bathroom.”
Vaping has become common among children and adolescents. The percentage of 8th graders to 10th graders who vape has doubled with the number of smokers from 8% to 16%.
Vaping or being exposed to vaping at an early age increases one’s chance of developing an addiction. According to the CDC,nicotine in adolescents can harm the part of the brain that controls our mood and learning abilities which can affect how well students do in school. Although experts do not know the long term effects of vaping, they do know that it harms the youth who use it.
Vaping is not a problem just affecting FCPS or Maryland schools; it is impacting America as a nation. Many schools have contemplated options to help lower vape use.
Montgomery County Schools installed vaping detectors in the bathrooms due to their astronomical number of students who vape. They have been one of the first school districts in Maryland to install vapor detectors.
Putterman thinks LHS could benefit from having vapor detectors.
“I think vapor detectors will be beneficial for our school,” Putterman said. “Vandalism and vaping do not go hand in hand, but we have to close at least one bathroom every two or so days due to the amount of vandalism we have.”
Many think vapor detectors are effective and affordable solutions to discourage vape use. Frederick County’s Director of School Safety and Security Scott Bundell said, “FCPS has looked into different vape detection products,” Bundell said. “We need to ensure that the detectors would provide the needed information about where the vaping is occurring.”
Vaping is not necessarily taking over schools due to over 80% of the students not smoking their whole high school career, but it is a huge problem in this generation. Linganore High School Assistant Principal Marcus Allen says, “Vaping in the bathrooms has been a problem for the last 4-5 years,” Allen said. “FCPS has this program called ASPIRE which we recommend people to look into to stop vaping,”said Allen.
School districts have been suffering from vaping and vandalism for years, schools still have no resolution on what to do to stop vaping from taking over schools.
