By Neval Mulaomerovic
Milpitas Unified School District (MUSD), in partnership with School BoardRepresentatives Kush Brahmbhatt and Timothy Griggs, is implementing a district-wide anti-vaping initiative, Brahmbhatt said. The goal of the initiative is to spread awareness about the negative effects of vaping and to reach out to students who are currently addicted to vaping, he said.
The program would use teenagers rather than adults to get the program’s messages across because students are more willing to listen to their peers, Brahmbhatt said. After spreading information about the harms, the program will provide different solutions and counseling resources to help students stop their dependence on vaping.
“[Vaping] is becoming a big problem,” Brahmbhatt said. “We are planning to use social media as one of the main mediums to get people the information that we want to get across. We are planning to talk to not just high schoolers, but also middle schoolers so that they are aware of the dangers of vaping before they are exposed to it too much.”
Santa Clara County, the City of Milpitas, and MUSD are all working together on the program, Board of Education Vice President Chris Norwood said in an email. To expand the program to reach more students, district-wide communication channels and city-sponsored rehab programs can be used, he said in an email.
“Kids as young as 12 years old are permanently damaging their lungs all over the country,” Norwood said in an email. “As a Board member, I can recommend tough rules [such as] suspension or expulsion. I’m interested in seeing if the Milpitas youth can come together with a better long term solution. I asked [Brahmbhatt] to do the research, learn what’s going on, and to build a team of students to provide the best answers.”
In the future, the initiative may use a school-wide survey to get a count of how many people know about vaping or currently vape, Brahmbhatt said.
“If we gather data about how much students [vape], then we can figure out what to do,” Brahmbhatt said. “It’s a hard thing to admit and we probably won’t ever pinpoint who is doing it, but we can target the whole school in general.”
The district currently uses many informational materials, signs, and posters to educate students and discourage them from vaping, Norwood said. However, that might not be enough to solve the issue at hand, he said.
“Sometimes those materials have the opposite effect,” Norwood said. “Telling a kid not to do something is like saying ‘I think you should try this and not tell anyone.’ Different kids from different cultures vape for various reasons. What the district has discovered over the past four months is that we see each other every day but aren’t close enough to each other to make a positive impact or assist in decision making. We need students to help work with students.”
Students may have begun vaping so frequently because vaping products are so accessible in stores and because some store owners do not even ask for identification from teenagers, Griggs said. One possible way to address the issue of vaping on campus is to have staff check the bathrooms during passing period, or have vacant areas or blind spots monitored, he said.
“I don’t want students to feel subjugated and those with nicotine addictions to have an even harder time in school,” Griggs said. “I figure that classes similar to sex-ed, but focused on substance abuse, would make an impact to inform people of the risks of the choices they make.”
