Vaping in school along with out of school has become such a major issue that some schools in the Lehigh Valley have installed vape detectors to try and prevent vaping in school. Vape detectors have a laser scanning sensor in which it catches people vaping in high school bathrooms by detecting the particles of the vape. When these particles get stuck in the air, they slowly move upward into the vape detector.
Some statistics have found that every few seconds a student is caught vaping from the help of vape detectors that are installed in high school bathrooms. Vape detectors are meant to record timestamps which are supposed to sync up with school video cameras.
Vape detectors are said to be very effective and a cheap and affordable way for high schools to stop or try to stop high schoolers from vaping at school. Putting vape detectors in high school bathrooms to set goals for high schools to create a safe and healthy learning environment.
“I think it is smart for schools to install vape detectors because of the dangers that vapes pose,” said mathematics teacher Michael Vidumsky.
Numerous high schools in the Lehigh Valley have installed the devices and in some districts it was students who were the ones pushing their schools to install the detectors because they stated there were groups of students that would go to the bathrooms just for vaping. This often made bathrooms uncomfortable to use.
There are possible downsides to using the detectors. Sometimes there are multiple people in the bathroom at once and the detectors cannot pinpoint exact culprits.
“There would be too much collateral damage because if one person was in the bathroom vaping and another person is in the same bathroom not vaping and the vape detector goes off, both students will get in trouble even if the one person wasn’t vaping,” said junior Coltrane Steidle. Steidle did admit that the detectors could none-the-less deter some students from vaping in the bathroom which could still be a positive.
Both Nazareth and Southern Lehigh have installed detectors in the bathrooms to mitigate vaping. Time will tell whether or not the devices are effective. But it does seem that the pros outweigh the cons even though the detectors may not completely eradicate vaping on school ground altogether.
