Vaping has become “ubiquitous” in schools, leading to a boom in bathroom policing

It’s this creepy surveillance that gives some students pause, even those who told The 74 they support e-cigarette detectors in bathrooms. The prospect of unknown capabilities with sensors “is very scary to me,” said Moledina, the Austin teen, who worries about a future in which bathrooms come equipped with cameras.

“Just knowing there’s smoke in the bathroom doesn’t really help you because the officials already know what’s going on, and just knowing there’s smoke isn’t going to help them figure out who’s doing it,” he said. “So my concern is that eventually, we’ll end up with cameras in bathrooms, which we certainly don’t want,” he added.

Teachers in Minneapolis used surveillance cameras along with sensors to identify students using e-cigarettes in bathrooms, discipline records show.

In February, for example, a senior at Roosevelt High School was suspended for a day over accusations that he used an e-cigarette in the bathroom. Officials reviewed footage from a surveillance camera outside the bathroom and determined that the student was “in and out of the bathroom during the time frame that the detector went off.” They were searched, and officials found “a marijuana cigarette, an empty glass jar with the smell of marijuana and a bag with an herbal shake.”

That same month, teachers referred a Camden High School student to a drug and alcohol counselor for “vaping in individual bathrooms.”

“After I reviewed the camera, it showed (a) student leaving the same bathroom,” campus officials reported.

Gutierrez, an 18-year-old from Arizona, said she stopped vaping after she was suspended, and now she copes with depression through positive means like drawing. But what she didn’t do is quit smoking because she received help at school to address the mental health challenges that led her to vape in the first place.

She said she stopped vaping during her suspension because she was away from her friends and didn’t have access to them. Gutierrez recalled being afraid of further compliance, with online lessons that portrayed vaping as a slimy purple monster that would poison her relationships.

“Yes, I stopped, but it wasn’t a good stop,” she said. “I didn’t get any support. I didn’t get any counseling. I stopped because I was afraid.”