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‘This wouldn’t be acceptable if it was cigarettes’: Schools told to report vaping students
The vaping crisis gripping the state’s schools is getting worse, the state’s education minister has said.
Education Minister Prue Car, responding to reports the Department of Education only recorded 65 incidents of vaping in schools last year, urged principals to report every student caught vaping so the extent of the problem could be known.
Education Minister Prue Car said principals tell her the vape crisis is getting worse.Credit: Rhett Wynman
“It is very concerning for us, the rise of vaping in schools, and it’s a top-order priority for the Minns Labor government.”
Among the small number of incidents captured in public school logs last year were several cases of students caught dealing a stash of vapes out of their schoolbag. The logs, first reported by the News Corp, also revealed a schoolgirl had a seizure and had to be hospitalised after vaping while a boy collapsed after puffing on one at lunchtime.
The logs show primary school children, as well as those in high school are being caught vaping.
While some students vape openly in class, in one incident a “a very good student” was caught after a teacher saw a vape fall out of her bag.
Teachers are also being forced to play detective: at one incident at a northern beaches high school, teachers combed through CCTV footage in a bid to catch a student they suspected of dealing vapes. They eventually caught him and gave him a 10-day suspension.
Numerous students were given a warning, some were put on a behaviour plan while others were just given some health advice about vaping.
Car said principals had told her the problem was growing in its seriousness and she wanted more schools to report whenever a student was caught vaping so education authorities knew the full extent of the problem.
“How can we actually work at solving a problem that we don’t really understand how much of a problem it is? We need our schools to report. I encourage schools to report; I encourage schools to put up their hand and say we need help with this,” she said.
The previous government rolled out an anti-vaping campaign in schools last year developed by NSW Health and the Department of Education. The toolkit distributed to schools included information saying e-vaping liquids had chemicals that are similar to antifreeze in a bid to show children what they might really be inhaling.
“Work was done by the previous government but this is growing in its seriousness because principals are telling me ... that it’s an increasing problem in schools,” Car said.
“We want to support schools with disciplinary efforts to deal with children that are vaping in schools.”
Labor will shortly announce a vaping roundtable that will bring health experts together to tackle the problem.
Vapes come in fun colourful packages, luring children to their use before hooking them on nicotine.Credit: Joe Armao
Before the March state election, it said it supported installing vape detectors in school bathrooms in a bid to stamp out the problem.
The Department of Education put out a tender seeking a company to supply 40,000 of the devices, which would have also picked up students smoking or vaping cannabis products.
In response to questions about the status of that plan on Saturday, Car said she was “working that through with schools where we know it’s a particular problem.”
“Some schools have requested that, where they’re really struggling with that in their schools, but we want to be looking at that as a whole of community issue.”
Vaping is not limited to public schools: Catholic schools and private schools such as Knox Grammar have also grappled with the problem in recent years by installing vape detectors in the toilets.
The federal government in May said Australia would be the first country to completely ban disposable vapes.
Disposable vapes, which are used by more than a million Australians, would be stripped from convenience store shelves but the government would make it easier to get them with a doctor’s prescription.
Health experts from the Australian National Advisory Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs said it would probably only make the black-market problem worse.
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