LEWISTON, Maine — School leaders in the Lewiston School District are looking into installing vaping smoke detectors to deter and prevent vaping as the problem continues in schools across Maine.
"We had actually thought that we had pushed tobacco to the far corner," Lewiston High School Principal Jonathan Radtke said. "All of a sudden, vapes started to appear everywhere."
Radtke says often times students congregate in school bathrooms. Although school staff monitors those spaces, it hasn't been enough to curb usage.
A discussion within the school for a handful of months, the vaping detectors would be able to detect how many students are in the bathroom, and connect with the school's security cameras to know when a student enters a bathroom.
However, a big barrier is cost. Currently, the school is looking into applying for grant funding to help cover the installation and program.
"To do the right thing for students and adults in this building, we have to increase a bit our level of surveillance," Radtke added.
To supplement those efforts, resources like My Life My Quit and Maine Quit Link, which are aimed at teens, are working at the state level to provide the coaching they need to quit.
"This is something that is specifically for them, accessible for them, that it's confidential," Associate Director of Disease Prevention at the Maine CDC Jamie Bourque said. "And so we're really trying to come in and educate them on these are services that are available for the young people you're working with."
Those combined efforts may be chipping away at the problem. According to the most recent Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, answers showed an 11 percent decrease in the overall number of people vaping in 2021, when compared to 2019.
Radtke says if detectors are installed, they won't be a final solution to the problem but another piece of the puzzle to help students quit.
"[The detector is] the warning to have a conversation with a student to see what's going on," Radtke said. "It's another tool we have to keep students safe."