By SARAH DOOLITTLE, Four Points News
Chris doesn’t have any reason for vaping other than,”My friends were doing it so I did it,” starting in the 8th grade.
Now a freshman, Chris was caught vaping on campus. “They took (my e-cigarette) away and I got ISS (in-school suspension) for a week.”
The punishment, though, didn’t change his attitude toward vaping or act as a deterrent. Chris continues to vape on campus, as do all of his friends.
Chris says that, in fact, kids across all social groups and extracurricular activities vape at VHS. Gone is the stereotypical image of the stoner or troublemaker smoking under the bleachers. Vaping at school, it seems, has gone mainstream.
“Now, most people do it. I know a couple that don’t, but most of the people that I know do it.”
“It’s not peer pressure,” he added. “It’s more like, oh, that seems really cool to do.”
“A lot of people go in the bathroom and do it with their friends. And then some people do it in class,” he said, including himself.
“You do it under your desk… there’s tricks and stuff so you can keep (the vapor) in,” he said, which he learned from YouTube and from practicing. (There are hundreds upon hundreds of YouTube videos on vaping techniques and tricks.)
Hiding and vaping is relatively easy. “It’s a really big campus.”
Chris said that students also vape at school, “because they don’t want to get caught at home doing it.”
Having his vape taken away, to Chris, felt “like taking away any sort of fun that we have. I know for me, when I got it taken away, all I was thinking about was getting a new one, where I would get it, what money I would use. It makes me want to get it a little more.”
And yet despite his own description of a seeming obsession with his vape, Chris insists he is not addicted. “Not really. I can stop whenever.”
As with many adults, Chris believes that vaping is harmless, especially when compared to other substances. “What I’ve heard is that (vaping) is way better than smoking weed and drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. So, that’s why I do it because I think it’s okay. Not harmful,” he said.
Of course, he added, “I don’t really know the science behind it, but I think it’s safe. I don’t use nicotine a lot. I use water vapor.”
And if he learned tomorrow that vaping has dangerous health effects, would he still do it? “Probably,” he admited.
E-cigarettes are, according to Chris, easy to find and buy at school. “I know there’s a lot of people… who buy (e-cigarettes) then sell them” on campus, he said.
And those selling are, again, not some stereotypical “bad” crowd but sometimes even straight-A students. He said that seniors who are 18 will buy them legally and sell them on campus.
“They’re pretty easy to get — really easy to get.” And not just e-cigarettes. “A lot of people who sell vapes sell a lot of other stuff. They’ll post it on Snapchat or Instagram.”
“From my perspective, I think it’s something that should be accepted,” said Chris. Rather than parents and schools worrying about vaping, “I think we shouldn’t get in trouble for it.”
For Chris’s parents, deciding what exactly to do in response to his vaping — and determining how much control they really have over this easily-concealed behavior — has required a level of reasoned acceptance.
“Now we’ve agreed to disagree and not search his room anymore and let him keep his own property. But obviously there’s no vaping in our house or during school,” explained his mom.
“It’s the lesser of evils. If we can agree to disagree on this one thing, other drugs are off limits,” she said.
Not that vaping is without consequences. Chris got grounded and his phone taken away as a result of getting caught vaping at school. And there will be more consequences if it happens again. “School punishment equals home punishment,” said his mom.
She and her husband are trying to keep vaping in perspective. “To (these kids), it’s not a drug like we think of, it’s not a habit like we think of. To them, it’s almost like buying jewelry. Like a phone. A trend. Once I realized that, I lightened up a little bit,” she said.
“I don’t think he’s going to overdose on a vape tomorrow,” she added. She and her husband focus instead on preventing potentially dangerous behaviors. “The kind of things that are going around at (school) that are life-threatening are more important than worrying about vapes… The rates of depression, of addiction to alcohol. The cutting. The stuff that’s really life-threatening. High stakes stuff.”
For Chris and his friends, vaping means that, “We live two different lives. One at home, the one you guys want to believe. And the one that we want to live, where we can do what we want to do.”
“It’s really hard to live two lives,” he acknowledged, with a teenager’s slow realization of one of the many real consequences of choosing to vape.
Chris, whose name has been changed in this story to protect his privacy, and his mom, agreed to be interviewed and to share his experiences with vaping at home and at Vandegrift.