Incidents of students caught with nicotine, THC vapes on the rise
The Palm Beach Post | By Olivia Franklin | December 18, 2025
When a student tried to get into Sebastian River High School through a fence instead of entering through the usual doors, it was because he did not want to get caught with vapes by the metal detector, Indian River County School Resource Sgt. Jeremy Shephard recalled about the April incident.
“School went on lockdown, school resource deputies chasing after him,” Shephard said. “They thought (a bulge in his clothing) was a gun and it was all because of vapes.”
The 18-year-old was charged criminally with possession of a controlled substance, trespassing on school property and disruption of a school function.
The concern of students vaping in school is an issue across the country and in all Florida public school districts.
In 2021, those districts had begun to fight back with more than 100 nationally taking particular aim at the manufacturer Juul. Palm Beach County’s school district was among those to argue Juul not only imperiled the health of millions of teens but also drained district resources as they attempt to combat a tsunami of nicotine addiction and its repercussions.
In December 2023, Juul settled four different massive lawsuits accusing the company of marketing to teens, with an estimated $10 million due to come to Palm Beach County schools, The Palm Beach Post reported at the time.
Vaping devices seized at Palm Beach County Schools
Still, the problem of teen use persists.
Shephard said he deals with vaping situations in Indian River County schools more than most other things. In St. Lucie County, School Resource Capt. Troy Norman said vaping is the biggest issue in schools, along with students threatening other students.
Similar to how cigarettes used to be, vapes, which contain nicotine, have been pushed toward youth, Martin County sheriff’s Lt. Joseph Kukuvka said.
The “e-juice” that fills vape cartridges usually contains nicotine (which is extracted from tobacco), propylene glycol, flavorings and other chemicals. Studies have found that even vapes, also called e-cigarettes, claiming to be nicotine-free contain trace amounts of nicotine, according to the American Lung Association.
“I think that’s why we’ve seen such an increase. It’s switched from cigarettes to vaping,” Shephard said.
Vaping increasing in schools
According to the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey, more than 1.6 million (5.9%) U.S. middle and high school students reported using vapes in 2024, including 1.2 million high school students and 410,00 middle schoolers. More than 8 in 10 of those youth use flavored vapes.
Research from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says disposable vape use nationally has increased 1,000% among high school students and 400% among middle school students since 2019.
In Florida, districts reported 22,022 vaping-related incidents in schools during the 2023-2024 school year, the most recent numbers available from the Florida Department of Education’s School Environmental Safety Incident Report. The report categorizes a vaping-related incident as any reported incident that involves the use of noncombustible vaping products.
Seven of the state’s 67 districts each reported more than 1,000 such incidents, including Palm Beach County, which counted 1,772 — a number surpassed only by Broward County with 1,891 incidents. Both school districts are among the largest in the state and nation, with Palm Beach County schools enrolling more than 180,000 students. Its neighboring districts to the north are considerably smaller, but their problems appear to be to scale with 434 vaping incidents reported in Indian River County; 260 in Martin County; and 169 in St. Lucie County.
An Assortment of vapes for sale at Tobacco King and Vape store, Oct. 17, 2025 in Stuart.
In the 2020-2021 school year, when the state first added a category for vaping-related incidents, Palm Beach County schools reported 396 vaping incidents; Indian River County schools had 165 incidents; St. Lucie County schools had 48 incidents and Martin County schools had 36 incidents.
To be sure, vaping was already on the radar many school administrators before the state added it to the litany of incidents it inventories.
In 2019, the principal at Seminole Ridge High at that time told anyone who would listen that in the past year and a half he’d summoned ambulances to his Westlake campus 15 times to speed students to the hospital after vaping.
He invited to campus a lawyer in the juvenile division of the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office to recount to rooms full of teens a case that begins with two students sharing a “puff” on one of these electronic nicotine devices.
The boy takes that puff without incident. But when the girl takes a hit, “she goes down.” The girl recovers, but when a lab analyzes what she inhaled, they find not only the active ingredient in marijuana but also methadone and traces of pesticide.
In an auditorium on that weeknight, the lawyer’s colleague warned about the legal troubles that can dog students who think vaping is no big deal — particularly liquid forms of marijuana. Students rarely realize that the amount of concentrated THC lurking in the oils can easily spell felony where a baggie full of the stuff would not.
The number of kids facing vape-related felonies in Palm Beach County went from eight in 2017 to 115 in 2018. Another 46 were logged in the first quarter of 2019, the State Attorney’s Office reported at the time.
But even nicotine can carry legal repercussions. To smoke a vape or anything with nicotine someone must be 21 or older. In the Treasure Coast, if a student under that age on the Treasure Coast is found with one, they will be written a nicotine citation with a $25 fine, and the school resource officer will confiscate the vape, Kukuvka said.
Meanwhile, a student with a THC-filled vape is considered a criminal infraction. For someone 18 and older it could mean an arrest and a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia, which would be a misdemeanor, Kukuvka said. If the student has a THC vape and is under 18, they could be issued a civil citation, he said.
Despite warnings and repercussions, school resource officer report vapes containing THC, the primary psychoactive compound found in the cannibis plant, are also increasingly in popular.
Popularity, peer pressure, and packaging
Kristen Crowhorn, 24, an employee at Cozy Corner 2.0 vape shop in Stuart, said vapes are most popular among 21-to-35-year-olds, but there are some exceptions.
“Vapes are definitely for the younger crowd. That’s what they tend to come in for the most,” Crowhorn said. “Sometimes you do get a 70-year-old coming in here for that, but it’s rare.”
She usually sells about 15 to 20 vapes a week to people over age 21. The popularity, she said, is because it’s a trend everyone wants to follow.
“It’s the same as smoking a cigarette. It still has nicotine in it,” Crowhorn said.
Norman said part of the reason there’s been a rise in vape incidents among students in schools in recent years is the different designs vapes come in. Parents might not know what to look for.
“If you’re not somebody that vapes or smokes nicotine you look at it and think ‘That’s a funny looking thumb drive’ or ‘That’s a weird looking device — I don’t know what that is’ and that is part of the problem,” Norman said.
There’s different flavors, flashy packaging, and there’s the peer pressure aspect of it, Kukuvka said.
“I think all of those factors play a part in the influence that it has over kids,” he said.
Vaping is not just a high school problem
Shephard said the most common ways people under 21 get their hands on a vape is by having someone over 21 buy it for them, or in some cases, a vape store will sell to someone underaged.
If a student is caught in school with a vape, it’s because the school resource deputy saw the student with a vape, a school administrator saw the vape and brought it to the deputy, or another student tips off the deputy to investigate.
A common place that students have been caught using vapes is in the bathrooms, but they have also been caught smoking them in the hallways when they think no one is looking, or when going through the metal detectors, Shephard said. Sometimes, a vape falls out of a student’s pocket in the middle of class.
Kukuvka said they have seen all kinds of different scenarios where students have tried to hide their vapes to avoid getting in trouble or have them taken away.
One particular incident, he said, was students flushing vapes down the toilet, which resulted in the sewer lines getting backed up.
“Sometimes our security monitors will go into the bathrooms, and there will be a group of kids and it’s obvious that they’re vaping,” Shephard said. “We can bring them out. If they refuse to admit that they have a vape on them, one of our school resource deputies can use a metal detecting wand to see if it hits on any metal on their person.”
If a student is suspected of having a vape, a school administrator can search the student’s backpack, but a school resource deputy would need probable cause to do so, according to Norman.
“There are several different ways it comes through us,” Kukuvka said. “Once we investigate it and determine if there is probable cause or a civil citation to be issued, we’ll do that.”
The issue is not only with kids in high school, though, Shephard said. A fourth-grader in Indian River County was caught with a vape on school grounds, who stole the vape from their 14-year-old brother.
Norman said during the 2024-2025 school year a middle-school student in St. Lucie County was found with 11 nicotine vapes.
Some vaping facts from hopkinsmedicine.org
Vaping is less harmful than smoking, but it’s still not safe. Vapes heat nicotine (extracted from tobacco), flavorings and other chemicals to create an aerosol that you inhale. We don’t know exactly what chemicals are in vapes, but there’s almost no doubt that vaping exposes you to fewer toxic chemicals than smoking traditional cigarettes.
Research suggests vaping is bad for your heart and lungs. Nicotine is the primary agent in regular cigarettes and vapes, and it is highly addictive. Emerging data suggests links to chronic lung disease
Vapes are just as addictive as traditional cigarettes.
Vapes aren’t the best smoking cessation tool. Although they’ve been promoted as an aid to help you quit smoking, vapes have not received Food and Drug Administration approval as smoking cessation devices.
A new generation getting hooked on nicotine. Among youth, vapes, especially the disposable kind, are more popular than any traditional tobacco product. There are three reasons vapes may be particularly enticing to young people: Many teens believe vaping is less harmful than smoking; vapes have a lower per-use cost than traditional cigarettes; and the lack of smoke is appealing. With no smell, vapes reduce some of the stigma of smoking.
