E-cigarettes light up the hallways

E-cigarettes+light+up+the+hallways

Photo illustration by Matt Roe, Michaela Durner and Joaquin Dorado-Mariscal

LHS junior recently made the switch to electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes.

She, like multiple other students, has enjoyed the benefits of the smokeless, odorless nicotine  dose that makes e-cigarettes less harmful to the health of users. However, the biggest perk is that users are now able to go unnoticed when they smoke indoors — even in school.

“I just got really done with smoking cigarettes,” she said. “They are really harsh, and they aren’t fun to be seen with. My friends had e-cigarettes, and they let me try them a lot. I love them because they aren’t as harsh, they don’t smell, and you can smoke them inside. They are easier to deal with and rechargeable, so they’re a lot cheaper.”

In 1987, Kansas outlawed the use of cigarettes inside schools as a response to research revealing health and public safety effects. Since then, countless campaigns capitalized on the dangers of smoking, raising societal awareness and in effect, publicly denormalizing the act itself.

Around 2007, e-cigarettes gained popularity in the United States. Even more recently, the devices have become a presence at Lawrence High.

E-cigarette sales reached a whopping $1.3 billion in the United States in 2013 alone. Some experts are predicting that they may eclipse traditional cigarettes altogether.

Until 30 years ago, schools didn’t outlaw smoking. In fact, until the late ‘80s LHS had a designated smoking area shared by teachers and students.

While the culture has changed and fewer students smoke, cigarettes remain a part of high school students’ lives. However, the way students get nicotine is beginning to change. Since the release of e-cigarettes, students have been able to purchase models and use them at school — even if it’s against the rules.

On occasion, some students will run the risk of taking a drag from an e-cigarette in class. It’s more likely to happen in a non-lecture setting or when students have time to conceal their use from teachers. The tell-tale cigarette smell isn’t an issue with e-cigarettes.

The anonymous junior said she herself has smoked inside classrooms during the school day and did so without getting caught.

“Well the [water] vapor is a lot thinner, so if you blow it out fast enough, it dissolves almost immediately,” she said.

Other students confirm the popularity of the smoking alternative, and attribute it to the loose legal standards surrounding them.

“I have seen them around the school, they’ve been becoming more and more common,” sophomore Jeremiah Barbe said. “I think it’s because cigarettes are illegal, but e-cigarettes without the nicotine inside of the oil are not technically illegal for children under the age of 18, and most people buy them.”

Since e-cigarettes are a fairly recent addition to the market, lawmakers are just beginning to address their use. Major cities, such as Boston, have already enacted workplace bans on the devices. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles legislators are considering prohibitions of public use.

The state of Kansas has already responded to the issue, including e-cigarettes under Statute 79-3321, which was updated in 2012. It is now punishable by law, “to sell, furnish or distribute cigarettes, electronic cigarettes or tobacco products to any person under 18 years of age.”

LHS students say they still get e-cigarettes from older friends. Some buy them from online vendors.

If students are caught with e-cigarettes, it would be the responsibility of the Student Resource Officers (SRO) to deal with their presence on school grounds.

Despite rising popularity, Officer Mike Cobb has yet to receive reports of e-cigarette use or even issue a general cigarette citation all year.

“I’ve heard of many people using them, but catching people at school with them, no. We haven’t had any incidences of that,” Cobb said.

While no student has been caught, staff members have taken parts of the devices to the SRO office on three different occasions this year.

Students that have them are generally inconspicuous with them, and they may slip past teachers because some more closely resemble an ink pen than a traditional cigarette. Hits usually take about five seconds and can be done while teachers have their backs turned. Most students know the consequences of getting caught.

“If you get caught with one it is obviously going to get taken away,” the anonymous student said. “A lot of people keep them very quiet, and the only places you can smoke them really are outside the school or in classrooms. Classrooms don’t have monitors.”

In a perspective article published in The New England Journal of Medicine, a concern was raised about the marketing of e-cigarettes to young people, referencing a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that twice as many teens tried e-cigarettes in ‘12 than ‘11.

However, in that same study, a decrease was seen in the number of kids using tobacco cigarettes. Regardless of possible health differences, the article cited concern about e-cigarettes turning into a “gateway drug” and prospectively undoing 25 years worth of anti-smoking progress.

“I’ve definitely seen in the last few years that [with] the Truth campaigns, things have really ramped up, showing people just how bad tobacco is for you,” Cobb said. “I think that it’s pretty well-known that cigarettes are bad.”

E-cigarettes are publicized as a safer alternative to smoking, but they still contain nicotine and other chemicals found in cigarettes. They still raise heart rate and blood pressure, which can cause cardiovascular issues, as well as risks for cancer.

Others concerns surround their indoor use in regard to second hand smoke. Since they let off water vapor opposed to smoke, they are less harsh to bystanders. However, traces of nicotine have been found in e-cigarette vapor, which is taken in by the people exposed.

“Nicotine is what is really bad, and that is what the e-cigarettes are, so I assume that pretty soon we will see something coming out about that, but we’ll just have to see,” Cobb said.

Unlike regular cigarettes, e-cigarettes have not been officially regulated by the FDA, so the devices and liquids are not quality regulated. Since they are new to the market, a comparatively small amount of research has been done about their health effects.

And of course, since nicotine is an addictive substance, smoking e-cigarettes still keeps anyone who smokes dependent on the dopamine release.

The anonymous student began smoking before e-cigarettes became prevalent, and prefers them over tobacco.

“I would prefer to be on it honestly,” the anonymous student said. “It’s almost easier to smoke. It makes everything feel calmer and not having it is stressful. I feel like I need something to use, and that makes the only option regular cigarettes, because those are the only things I can conceal.”

The student reports having tried to quit multiple times, and the use of vapor was a helpful in bridging the gap.

“Honestly, they do help you quit. They really do,” the anonymous student said. “It’s the same motion, and the same feeling. It’s just you don’t feel disgusting afterwards.”

Despite efforts, she has struggled to quit smoking in the face of pressure from peers and the media.

“There is always a constant fear of seeing something on television, or in a movie, and it saying ‘Oh, it’s OK again. You know they’re doing it, so I can do it,’” the anonymous student said. “I think a lot of people dismiss that, and think ‘Oh, that’s not real. They are probably just smoking candy or something,’ but it’s tough when you actually smoke. It’s easier to accept smoking on screen when you don’t. But when you see it on screen, it just pushes it back in your face.”

While the image of smoking has altered in the eye of the public, its prevalence remains somewhat of an incentive for normalization. Particularly in the entertainment industry, the impacts are underemphasized, even on popular sitcoms.

“There is so much propagation of it in the media,” the anonymous student said. “Even ‘How I Met Your Mother’ propagates it. I watch [the show] all the time, so I was just starting to try to quit. Then, I saw the episode, and I was like ‘It’s OK now, because my favorite people are now doing it.’ They’re trying to say everyone quit in the end, but that’s not how it works. The damage has been done.”

All of the characters in the show were of legal age to use tobacco, but the show is widely viewed by young people and seeing relatable characters doing it makes it seem more acceptable.

This normalization is further elevated by the novelty of the e-cigarette.

“It’s easier to be accepted with them,” the anonymous student said. “So it’s almost like, ‘This is vape. This is a vaporizer, and I only use it for vape. That’s all it is, it’s just puffing water vapor.’ You can say that, and everyone will accept it, but with regular cigarettes you can’t do that.”

Barbe does not believe that the new device changes the culture, but gives an alternative to traditional tobacco.

“They never really went away,” Barbe said. “It’s not really creating normality of it. Yeah, it’s making it more common in schools, but it’s not like smoking cigarettes . . . Because of electronic cigarettes, I actually think we are going to see a decline in regular cigarettes . . .because of the fact that essentially it’s healthier than a normal cigarette.”

Healthier or not, e-cigarettes exist at LHS. They may leave little physical trace. However, the vapor leaves students and staff wondering about how to deal with the issue.

“There is always something new coming out,” Cobb said. “We try to research that with the kids, have conversations with people, finding out what’s going on that we need to be worried about.”