US: Lincoln Public Schools Launch Quit Vaping Program

While educational sessions about the dangers of vaping are already part of the curriculum, the newly launched intervention program aims to delve deeper.

Diane Caruana

April 28, 2022

Meanwhile the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey has found that cigarette smoking amongst teens has consistently decreased in parallel with an increase in vaping.

As of October 1st 2021, Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) had caught 139 students with vapes. Despite the number of students learning off-campus, this figure equates only 31 fewer cases than the year before. “Understanding the role of the nicotine addiction that we are seeing in kids, that’s a big piece. A lot of these products have a very high concentration level of nicotine, and if our kids have a nicotine addiction, we might start to see things like nausea or vomiting or some of those physical symptoms, especially if they are going through withdrawals,” said Abbe Edgecombe S.C.I.P. coordinator for Lancaster county.

“It can be difficult to detect and find, which unfortunately allows for a little bit more use in schools,” added Russ Uhing Director of Student Services for LPS. “If a student is an offender, if they are in possession of or use of a vaping product along with other potential consequences, we also have an online class that they have to take,” said Uhing.

Increased vaping rates are leading to decreased smoking rates

Meanwhile, analyzing cross-sectional data from the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey data between 1999 and 2020, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have found that cigarette smoking amongst teens has consistently decreased in parallel with an increase in vaping.

The research team found that while vaping has drastically increased since 2014 and is the most commonly used nicotine or tobacco product among middle and high school students, this has led to a sharp decrease in the use of more harmful combustible tobacco products.

They also found that the CDC’s any tobacco product use measurement, a binary measurement which asks if someone has used any tobacco product in the past 30 days, fails to differentiate between products according to their different levels of risk. “The majority of cigarette brands contain similar ingredients, concentration and chemicals,” said Ruoyan Sun, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB School of Public Health’s Department of Health Care Organization and Policy and a study researcher.