350 suspensions issued for vaping at SA schools in 2022, amid calls for urgent action to address health dangers
The number of kids suspended from class for vaping has been revealed, after a week dominated by debates over how to police school toilets.
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About 350 vaping-related suspensions have been handed out to children this year, the Education Department says, amid increasing worries about the practice’s health effects.
The data demonstrating vaping’s shocking prevalence at schools comes against a backdrop of calls for more work to educate children about harms associated with using e-cigarettes.
E-cigarettes, or vapes, are battery-operated devices that use vaporised nicotine, or non-nicotine solutions called e-liquids, superheated to produce vapour for the user to inhale.
The Cancer Council says risks include acute lung injury, poisoning, burns and seizures – along with an increased likelihood for people to eventually be drawn into smoking tobacco.
Australian Education Union SA president Andrew Gohl said schools were seeing students transition from experimenting with cigarettes to vaping.
“We have to get better at actually educating our kids about vaping as a health issue,” he said.
Schools were playing their part to warn of the dangers of e-cigarettes, Mr Gohl said, but more could be done to crackdown on their use.
“We have very graphic pictures on cigarette packets that are very off-putting to a smoker and the same sort of imagery and government control isn’t the case in the vaping industry.”
An Australian National University report on e-cigarette use in April found vaping’s popularity was “increasing rapidly” and more than half of all use was in combination with tobacco smoking.
The Australian Medical Association says 14 per cent of 12–17-year olds have tried vaping.
Two students at Golden Grove High this week said children were vaping in the toilets amid a saga involving outer doors being removed at toilet blocks at some schools.
Aberfoyle Park High’s principal Marion Coady and assistant principal Jackie Robinson recently wrote to parents, saying vaping among young people was causing “growing concern”.
They said most teenagers were unaware of the health risks, and many were succumbing to peer pressure around the “risk-taking activity” because it was easy to access vapes, which were often cheaper than cigarettes.
The school said staff were working to stop vaping, and trained to monitor areas such as toilets or the oval.
Cancer Council SA tobacco lead Christine Morris said young people who used e-cigarettes were three times as likely to take up smoking tobacco as those who didn’t vape.
“Nicotine is not supposed to be in any (e-cigarettes) that people can purchase in Australia, but it seems to be a real problem,” Ms Morris said.
“Some of the social media sites like TikTok have competitions for kids to show where they’ve been vaping – it all sounds harmless, but it’s not harmless.”
Cancer Council will approach the Education Department in the hope the organisations can work together to reduce vaping.
In 2019, law changes were made in SA, making it illegal to promote vaping products, display them at point of sale and sell them over the internet. It is also against the law to sell the products to children.
A government spokeswoman said Education Minister Blair Boyer had spoken to Commissioner for Children and Young People Helen Connelly about tackling vaping in schools.
It was also providing $2.25m over three years to Life Education SA and Encounter Youth to deliver alcohol and drug education.
“There is a strong alcohol and other drugs education program within the Australian Curriculum from Foundation to Year 10 to support students in understanding the impacts,” the spokeswoman said.
Health Minister Chris Picton was “deeply concerned” about the potential harms caused by e-cigarettes.
“I think there is still more work to be done to protect South Australians – particularly our kids – against the harms caused by both tobacco and e-cigarettes, and it’s something I’ll be pursuing further as Minister,” he said.
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