Elk Grove High School administrators and officials want to make it clear.

“[We] talk about the dangers of vaping with parents and trying to partner with parents on the front end,” Steven Lesniak, one of three division heads for student success, safety, and wellness, said. “This is what’s happening at our school. We’re not hiding anything.”

Because vaping is a serious issue at Elk Grove and one that has been addressed openly, there are some steps that officials have taken to continue to counter it. 

“We’ve partnered with some community based agencies for students that we know have a history of using, and we’ve connected up to those folks who actually come to Elk Grove High School,” Lesniak said. “They’re gonna pull students down and speak to them about ways they can overcome this addiction.”

With this in mind, Lesniak said it’s important to focus more on preventative measures rather than reactive ones. It’s better to stop it from happening in the first place than to have to help students deal with their addiction, and Lesniak says they have tried many other solutions in the past.

“We’ve had dogs come in before, and we don’t like doing that,” Lesniak said. “That can seem a little intimidating. But we do that in an effort to serve as a preventative measure. Some schools have installed vape detectors in bathrooms. There’s been conversation about metal detectors being installed in schools.”

Not all these proposals are feasible at a high school, however. The police dogs can’t come in every day, and hairspray has been found to trigger vape smoke detectors. Metal detectors would add an extra step in entering the school, and would take additional resources and funds to obtain.

“It’s a balance,” Lesniak said “We want our school to be a welcoming, friendly environment, safe environment.”

Additionally, cigarettes have a greater social stigma and association than vapes. To teenagers, vapes are seen as cool and hip, while cigarettes are generally seen as dirty and outdated.

“I don’t think they really know the long term effects that can happen with it, I think, because it is kind of new,” Dave Geist, a security guard at Elk Grove, said.