Schools are putting vape detectors in bathrooms — paid for by Juul

NPR | By Scott Neuman | September 12, 2024

E-cigarette use among young people in the U.S. dropped significantly over the past year, according to a new government study. The hopeful signs come as more schools are installing high-tech vape detectors in bathrooms and locker rooms to curb student use of e-cigarettes.

Some districts are using money from a $1.7 billion legal settlement against e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs to pay for the devices. But there’s disagreement over whether monitors are the best way to address the problem, and they have raised some privacy concerns.

Nearly 1.63 million, or 6%, of high school and middle school students reported using e-cigarettes in 2024, compared with 2.13 million, or 7.7%, the previous year, according to the 2024 Annual National Youth Tobacco Survey.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says the long-term effects of vaping are not understood, but that for teens, nicotine-related changes in the brain may affect attention, learning and memory.

“We see students who would never touch a cigarette, because that’s something that their parents or grandparents did,” says Michelle Mercure, the director of nationwide tobacco programs for the American Lung Association. Kids “see these products that are … tech friendly and that are flavored and those products are being marketed to them. And, unfortunately, a lot of them are … becoming addicted.”

A legal settlement with e-cigarette maker helps pay for vape detectors

In 2022, Juul settled some 5,000 lawsuits from states, counties and school districts that alleged that the e-cigarette maker used deceptive marketing aimed at teens and neglected to prevent underage sales of its products. Since then, additional suits have been settled. Money from those settlements has been used by schools from Spokane, Wash., to Orlando, Fla., to install vape detectors.

“Ultimately, we are supportive of all actions that demonstrably combat underage use of any tobacco product, including vapor products,” a Juul spokesperson said.

The vape detectors, which resemble home smoke detectors and cost about $1,000 each, send an email or text message to school officials every time vape smoke is detected — including cannabinoid THC or CBD. They also detect loud noises that might indicate a fight has broken out and can signal staff if someone tampers with them. Vape detectors are often integrated with security cameras in halls and other public areas, so if a staff member can’t respond immediately, they might still be able to identify a student who has been vaping.

The Lincoln Public Schools district in Nebraska received about $1 million from the Juul settlement and is using the money to install vape detectors in its high schools and, eventually, the middle schools.

As part of a pilot program launched last year, the district put the devices in restrooms and locker rooms at Lincoln East High School. It didn’t take long for vaping violations to decrease, says Ryan Zabawa, the district’s director of student services. In the first week of activation in October 2023, school officials received nearly 100 vaping alerts. By Christmas break, that number had dropped to just four. The district has since installed detectors in a second high school.

“It absolutely is a deterrent,” Zabawa says. Without the detectors, policing the restrooms and locker rooms for vaping was a “cat and mouse” game, he says. “Kids were doing it, but you couldn’t prove it. And you really wanted to try and get it stopped.”

School officials are concerned about the health of students, and they don’t want them breaking the law. The federal minimum age for purchasing tobacco products, including vapes, is 21.

Students caught vaping often face suspension

Lincoln East senior Blake Gronewold estimates that 10% to 15% of his classmates regularly vape, “usually in the bathrooms, sometimes in the hallways and the stairwells or, if they are really bold, class.”

Fellow senior Elizabeth Mason says since the detectors went in last year, she’s noticed far fewer “groups of people just hanging out in the bathroom.”

“It’s like the people in there are actually in there for the right purposes,” she says.

Students who trigger an alert are searched, and if a vape device is found, they face suspension and are required to take a vape-awareness course, Zabawa says.

While some school districts are experimenting with pilot programs, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in New York recently introduced legislation that would require the city’s Department of Education to put detectors in every public school.

Councilwoman Joann Ariola sees the legislation as a first step toward intervention for students. She also hopes that a crackdown in schools will help thwart the illegal sales of e-cigarettes.

“We get calls all the time about stores that are selling vapes illegally to minors,” she says. “These minors are using those vapes while they’re in school, while they’re at playgrounds. Parents are absolutely concerned, and rightly so.”

Leslie Ricciardelli, the superintendent for Florida’s Collier County Public Schools, acknowledges that some students will vape off campus regardless of the school’s approach to the problem. If parents “permit it at home, that’s their choice,” she says.

After a successful pilot project that saw an 80% drop in alerts over the course of the 2022-2023 school year, the district plans to deploy detectors in all of its high schools. Ricciardelli takes a no-nonsense approach with students who get caught. “The consequences are heavy,” she says. A first-time offense with nicotine results in a suspension. A second offense — or a first when a marijuana product is involved — will land the student in an alternative school.

Some favor education over punishment

But not everyone thinks the punitive approach is the right one. The American Lung Association’s Mercure oversees the organization’s “Vape-Free Schools Initiative,” a program that focuses on education and tries to help students quit.

“Students get caught and then they’re suspended,” Mercure says. The detectors make school officials feel like the problem can be solved without addressing the underlying issues.

“Some schools have already purchased those detectors,” she says. “Are we telling them to return them? No. But if they are using them, we would encourage them to make sure that they’re addressing [the issue] more broadly than just using the vape detectors.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says long-term effects of vaping are not understood, but that for teens, nicotine-related changes in the brain may affect attention, learning and memory.

School officials who talked to NPR acknowledge that they sometimes get “false positives” from substances such as perfume.

Lincoln East High’s Mason spoke of a classmate who says her spray deodorant set off one of the vape detectors. “I don’t think she’s the type to vape,” Mason says. Nonetheless, “she got pulled out” and searched.

IPVideo Corp. makes the HALO brand system used in the Lincoln school district. According to David Antar, head of HALO product sales at parent company Motorola Solutions, its line of detectors launched about six years ago and sales have spiked as schools use Juul settlement money to install the detectors.

Antar says the HALO system is 93% accurate and that false positives are rare. If students blow vape smoke into a plastic drink bottle or their clothes to evade detection, it normally just “takes longer for it to reach our sensors. Everything’s about airflow,” he says.

Vape detectors can strain student-teacher relationships

The American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes invasive student searches and seizure of student property, such as cellphones, argues that the harm caused by detectors outweighs the benefits.

The ACLU’s New York-based senior policy counsel, Chad Marlow, says surveillance technologies such as vape detectors can undermine “student relationships with the teachers and administrators who we want them to trust.” Instead, schools might be better served by “a hall monitor who has positive interactions with students and can still look out for vaping,” he says.

To be sure, there is a middle ground. On Long Island, New York, the nonprofit Lindenhurst Community Cares Coalition helped raise $39,000 to put 33 detectors in Lindenhurst Middle School. The system went online in June, so there isn’t much data yet.

But Executive Director Lori-Ann Novello says she and the Lindenhurst Union Free School District are in agreement that the detectors are meant as a “screening tool” to help students by educating rather than punishing them.

Novello says initially, it was the students’ idea. “They thought it was ridiculous that students were being suspended,” she says, only to be sent home where they would be free to vape.

The coalition hopes to tap some of Suffolk County’s $8.8 million share of the Juul settlement to expand to other local schools.

“It’s not a gotcha,” says Lindenhurst district Superintendent Vincent Caravana. “It’s not a goal to try to catch someone, to suspend them and to make an example out of them.

“We kind of all universally believe and recognize that addiction is a powerful thing and it’s a problem, and we want to address that before it becomes even more of a problem.”