Parents Concerned About Vaping Attend Forum At Newton South

NEWTON, MA — Vaping, or smoking electronic cigarettes, has become such an issue among youth in Newton that a couple hundred parents and guardians sat rapt in an auditorium Tuesday listening to experts speak about what's being called an epidemic that many know very little about.

One fundamental problem, Attorney General Maura Healey told those gathered, is that everybody was on board with e-cigarettes as a form of smoking cessation for adults.

"It makes a lot of sense to move from combustible cigarettes to e-cigarettes, which are supposed to be less harmful," she said adding it's good that the trend has been that youth smoking has gone down.

"But, what I am hearing, from far too many adults, in addition to kids, is that they think this is just some sort of ether out there that really isn't harmful," she said. "When in fact one cartridge used in these devices contains as much nicotine as one pack of cigarettes."

Some 20 percent of young people across Massachusetts said they had used a vaping device (compared to 11.4 percent of students who used traditional tobacco) in the last 30 days at the time of a risk behavior survey in 2017. And 41 percent of high school students reported trying e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are more popular than traditional tobacco products, according to Johns Hopkins. In 2015, the U.S. surgeon general reported that e-cigarette use among high school students across the country had increased by 900 percent.

"So many people are worried about this issue. I hear from educators, parents and guardians and I hear it from students," said Superintendent David Fleishman who is himself a parent of teens. "This came out of nowhere. As I told the crowd on Tuesday; Five years ago I would never have thought we'd be talking about this."

In Newton North alone, some 51 students were suspended last year as discipline for being caught vaping on campus, according to Fleishman.

Fleishman's forum on vaping and e-cigarettes was part of an annual series he puts together in an effort to engage parents and guardians in the school community. He invited a panel of speakers, including Healey, medical experts and Newton educators with the aim of helping provide insight and education for families and community members.

"We've made such progress on tobacco and now we have another product that's addicting teens," he said. "We learned about the chemistry of vaping and it just addicts teens and the power of nicotine. And it's now seen as cool. A big reason tobacco use has gone down is that it is seen as disgusting and here we have something accepted by peers and that's a disaster."

Fleishman said Newton needs a multifaceted effort and to involve teens to change the narrative.

"I think we need to start educating teens in fifth grade, we need to bring in parents and guardians and we need to educate our educators, which we've been doing some of," said Fleishman. "We need an intensive focus like we had with tobacco and cigarettes. And that took a generation to do."

Fleishman said Newton is addressing vaping in health classes beginning as early as fifth grade, and his plan is to be more active in middle school.

Newton has a zero tolerance policy for vaping, and treats finding vaping paraphernalia and juuling the same as tobacco.

"But we also need intervention. We're not going to punish our way out of this even if we have zero tolerance. We need cessation programs," he said. "We are starting prevention and intervention and getting kids into programs. But there are lots of kids out there vaping."

Newton is in the process of forming a working group on vaping made up of administrators, councilors, health department officials, and the plan is to involve students. The first meeting will be next week to figure out education, prevention and intervention, said Fleishman.

Watch the full panel discussion and Healey talk about how doctors are treating increasing numbers of pediatric patients for addiction because of vaping: