B.C. school installs vape detectors in bathrooms to curb students’ use

An Okanagan School District says it is seeing occurrence successful addressing the rising contented of students vaping successful schoolhouse washrooms.

“We’ve surely enactment a small spot of a wound into it,” Alan Stel, main of Summerland Secondary School told Global News.

“And we’re not the archetypal school. I deliberation it has been experimented with successful different districts, but surely this (is a) archetypal for the Okanagan and for our schoolhouse district.”

Stel said the task started erstwhile immoderate parents and students approached the schoolhouse territory with concerns and the territory asked if they could instal immoderate vape detectors successful 2 of the bathrooms.

“They look a batch similar CO2 detectors oregon fume detectors, small cages astir them,” helium added. “And past extracurricular there’s an alarm, similar a airy that flashes. And we lucifer that up with a camera truthful we tin way who is going successful and going out.”

Stel said portion these detectors are costly and they person received mixed reviews from students, they wanted to make a harm-reduction accidental truthful that each the students felt harmless successful those spaces.

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The Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey (CTNS) 2022 information showed that vaping rates person remained comparatively unchangeable since 2019 with astir 14 per cent of younker aged 15 to 19 reporting having vaped successful the past 30 days. A bulk of younker (69 per cent) who vaped successful the past 30 days had ne'er tried a baccy cigaret successful their life.

Stel said the adjacent measurement for his schoolhouse is to spell backmost to the committee and get their support to instal the detectors successful the different bathrooms.

“I deliberation the outgo truly is nominal if you look astatine the long-range due to the fact that it truly takes distant from the absorption of those spaces arsenic good and moves distant from that punitive piece,” helium added.