One high school principal utilized high-tech measures to prevent teenage students from using vape products.
As Wisconsin Public Radio reported, South Milwaukee High School Principal Mike Arendt was hardly settled in at his new post when he discovered how prevalent teen vaping was at the school. After being hired in 2024, Arendt quickly realized that proactive measures needed to be taken in order to help prevent children from falling into bad habits.
"It wasn't really until the start of the school year that I realized, holy cow, this is way more [common] than I thought it was," Arendt said. South Milwaukee High School decided to install vape sensors in its 11 bathrooms to detect vaping.
The school turned to HALO Smart Sensors and Soter Technologies to install the sensors, which are able to detect vaping, cigarette smoke, and THC in primarily discreet areas, such as bathrooms. Once the sensor detects activity, it is able to alert authorized users.
Arendt explained that the sensors proved to be well worth the $11,000 investment. "At the start, we were getting roughly about 70 to 80 detections a day over the 11 bathrooms," Arendt said, per WPR. The technology allowed school staff to act accordingly. "It's tracking them down and then having conversations and potentially searching student belongings," Arendt added.
Vapes often contain harmful substances, including nicotine and other cancer-causing chemicals. These substances can lead to severe health issues such as respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological system damage.
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Disposable vapes can also lead to increased electronic waste as well as plastic pollution. Vape products may contain a hazardous mix of plastic and toxic heavy metals. With their single-use design, they also are frequently discarded in landfills or scattered throughout the environment as litter.
As communities in Wisconsin increase campaigns to discourage teens from vaping, Wisconsin Department of Health Services officials report a noticeable decrease in the tobacco and vape products being sold to underage consumers.
"We know that more than 80% of adult smokers started before the age of 18, and about 95% of them before turning 21," State Health Officer Paula Tran told WPR. "This is why it is so important to continue the work to prevent young people from starting to use commercial tobacco and nicotine products to protect their health today and long into the future."
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