This is a vaping device. Vaping, which involves the use of c-cigarettes, is on the rise at Marquette Senior High School and high schools in general. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

MARQUETTE — There is a growing concern over vaping at Marquette Senior High School, and steps are being taken to handle the issue.

Principal Jon Young addressed the Marquette Area Public Schools Board of Education about vaping at its regular meeting Monday.

“We’re talking about e-cigarettes, or something along those lines,” Young said.

The Center for Addiction defines vaping as the act of inhaling and exhaling the aerosol, often referred to as vapor, which is produced by an e-cigarette or similar device. E-cigarettes do not produce tobacco smoke, it said, but an aerosol, often mistaken for water vapor, that consists of fine particles. Many of these particles contain varying amounts of toxic chemicals, which have been linked to cancer as well as heart and respiratory disease.

Unfortunately, it’s a problem at MSHS, with Young noting there already have been at least a dozen infractions of the vaping policy at MSHS this school year, which is close to equaling the number of infractions during the entire 2017-18 school year.

“The use of vaping has grown exponentially at the high school level over the last three years, and when I say at the high school level, I’m really talking about more than just MSHS,” Young said. “This is a societal issue that is across the United States and even reaching further than that.”

It’s a community problem as well.

“There’s a major misconception with our public, with our community, with our students that this is a healthy alternative to smoking,” Young said.

In fact, many students and families have indicated they believe they’re making a decent choice to choose an e-cigarette over a regular cigarette, he said.

“For us, our comment has always been, ‘It doesn’t always have to be one or the other. It can be neither,'” Young said.

Vaping devices have changed over time.

What the school district was seeing when vaping began was a particular device that allowed students to blow what they called “fat clouds,” he said, with the idea being the bigger the cloud and vapor, the better.

Shortly after, a different device came into vogue.

“It’s my opinion the reason we’re seeing this as opposed to the other now is because students are reaching the point of being addicted to nicotine and things along those lines, and so it’s no longer the joke of a fat cloud,” Young said. “Instead it’s, ‘I need to make sure I can get nicotine throughout the day.'”

As a result, smaller devices — which he said charge into the side of a USB device and resemble a thumb drive — began to be used.

“As the technology changes and the student use changes, it’s become a growing concern for us,” Young said.

As a result, MSHS is undertaking measures to combat the problem.

The approach staff is taking is to educate students, communicate information to the public and to hold students accountable, he said.

Educating students starts at the beginning of the year when staff meets with students to discuss policy and procedures, Young said, with vaping at the forefront of that discussion.

What’s stressed is the understanding that it’s becoming more of a problem, said Young, who added a MSHS newsletter addressed vaping with families at the end of the 2017-18 school year.

Young said signs communicating the school district’s policy and health concerns will be placed in bathrooms.

“That happens to be one of the prime locations,” Young said. “The device may have changed, but the location remains the same: smoking in the bathroom.”

Public service announcements and advisory lessons in the health curriculum also are planned, he said, as is an informational meeting for K-12 parents scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Nov. 1 at the high school’s Little Theatre.

“We really do feel that this is a topic that is important not just for our families, not just for the Bothwell (Middle School) families, but really for our elementary families as well,” Young said.

Student accountability is another important component in the vaping issue at MSHS.

The first vaping offense, according to Young, carries a three-day out-of-school suspension. The second offense carries a five-day OSS suspension, and with a third-offense comes a 10-day OSS suspension.

“We recognize that discipline is not going to be the answer in this particular situation,” Young said. “It may perhaps be a deterrent for those students who are kind of on the fence on in the gray area of ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’ But more importantly is the restorative justice side of this.”

Restorative justice practices, he said, involve meeting a student’s needs, whether it involves addiction or the beginning of a habit. A major concern, though, is that a student needs to be willing to participate.

If that student doesn’t participate, the disciplinary route would be taken, he said.

“The other concern is that right now in our community there are not a lot of great resources available for us for restorative justice,” Young said, although he added the school district has a group put together through the Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency called Prime For Life, which works with students with substance abuse problems.

Keith Glendon, MAPS board trustee, brought up the possibility of what could happen following the Nov. 6 election.

On the ballot will be Proposal 1, which if passed would legalize the recreational use and possession of marijuana for persons age 21 or older and enacting a tax on marijuana sales.

“I would think we need some proactive education and focus around the reality of not only vaping but other things that could been seen as OK by adults,” said Glendon, who pointed out that vaping devices could be used as a delivery method for substances in general.

Things could be at a tipping point now.

Young said that realistically, it’s beginning of the tobacco era again.

“The product has changed slightly in terms of the packaging, but the end result is really the same thing,” he said. “We’ve got a group of parents, we’ve got a group of students that need that education that we really needed 50 years ago with the smoking in general, and so that’s kind of what we’re trying to serve right now.”