As students return to classrooms, Albuquerque Public Schools is taking a more high-tech approach to address the growing problem of vaping among teenagers.
The district has installed 93 vape detectors across 13 high schools, excluding charter schools, to catch vaping on campus and create learning environments conducive to student learning.
Vaping among students has become a problem that dies hard, driven by peer pressure, stress, curiosity, and the thought that vaping is cool. Unlike cigarettes, vapor is harder for parents and teachers to detect. Some teenagers also wrongly believe e-cigarettes are harmless, or at least safer than their traditional counterpart.
Vapes can be brightly colored, sweetly flavored, and small enough to disappear into a pocket. But behind the seemingly harmless packaging and sleek designs lies a growing concern for parents, teachers, and health officials: nicotine addiction among children.
The hidden dangers behind the flavors
The appeal is in the packaging. Vapes come in colorful designs and flavors that can make them look more like candy or gadgets rather than a tobacco product.
But the consequences can be anything but harmless.
Nicotine is habit-forming and can cause addiction. It can affect the developing adolescent brain. Vaping has increasingly been linked to anxiety, depression, and sleep problems. Exposure to harmful chemicals harms the lungs.
Some e-cigarette aerosols contain potentially carcinogenic substances and other toxic chemicals. Experts have also associated vaping with respiratory problems, including chronic bronchitis and serious lung injury.
There is another layer of concern. Vaping devices can be used to deliver addictive substances other than nicotine, including cannabis.
Albuquerque schools turn to technology
For Albuquerque Public Schools, the response began with listening to students themselves.
APS Deputy Superintendent of Operations Dr. Antonio Gonzales said students helped officials identify where vaping was occurring and which areas of individual campuses were most vulnerable.
The problem for some schools is centered on bathrooms. At others, it happened outside campus buildings, around corners, or even beyond the school grounds.
“Every school had a specific fact pattern and a specific set of information that we took into consideration,” Gonzales said. “It was invaluable.”
The district invested money in the initiative. It allocated $500,000 in opioid settlement funds to purchase and install vape detectors.
The vape detectors will detect vapor and send an alert to a central location at the school. That signal allows administrators to respond when vaping is detected.
‘We want our schools to be healthy places’
The district implements a zero-tolerance policy on banned substances on school campuses. But education officials stress that punishment alone will not solve the problem.
APS has also directed millions of dollars in opioid settlement funds toward mental health counseling, drug prevention, and other initiatives to address the reasons young people turn to substances in the first place.
The district discussed these efforts at a school safety listening session on April 27.
More than $500,000 in settlement funding is supporting vape detectors for middle and high schools during the school year.
The money is also helping expand the Crossroads program, which provides master’s-level counseling to students and their families to prevent drug and alcohol use.
The district says it is among a small number of U.S. school systems offering this type of counseling program.
So far, Crossroads has served more than 1,600 high school students and 830 middle school students.
The numbers reveal the scale of the problem
The need for intervention is underscored by federal data.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, e-cigarettes were the most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. middle and high school students in 2024.
An estimated 1.63 million students — 5.9 percent — used e-cigarettes.
That included about 410,000 middle school students (3.5 percent) and 1.21 million high school students (7.8 percent).
And for many students, vaping was not an occasional experiment. Of students who currently use e-cigarettes, 87.6 percent used flavored products. Nearly four in 10 (38.4 percent) had used e-cigarettes on at least 20 of the previous 30 days.
More than 1 in 4, or 26.3 percent, said they are vaping every day.
The figures also differed among demographic groups. In 2024, female students reported current e-cigarette use at a higher rate than male students.
The CDC also found differences by race and ethnicity. Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native students reported the highest rate, at 11.5 percent; non-Hispanic Black or African American students followed at 7.0 percent; and non-Hispanic multiracial students at 6.6 percent.
Hispanic or Latino students reported a rate of 6.1 percent, followed by non-Hispanic White students at 5.9 percent and non-Hispanic Asian students at 2.3 percent.
Vapes can be used for more than nicotine
There is another reason why health officials are concerned. E-cigarettes do not necessarily contain only nicotine. The devices can also be used to consume other substances, including cannabis.
In 2016, nearly one in three, or 30.6 percent, U.S. middle and high school students who had ever used an e-cigarette reported using the device to consume marijuana.
Perhaps the most revealing statistic is that many teenagers who vape do not necessarily want to continue doing so.
In 2020, nearly 64 percent of current student e-cigarette users said they wanted to quit. About 67 percent said they had tried to quit during the previous year.
But breaking a nicotine habit is not a walk in the park.
Nicotine addiction can produce strong cravings, with withdrawal symptoms often reaching their peak during the first few days after quitting before gradually improving over the following days and weeks.
Teenagers trying to quit may initially experience headaches, tiredness, irritability, anger, or depressed feelings. They may struggle to concentrate or sleep, feel unusually hungry or restless, and find themselves thinking about vaping when they least expect it.
APS officials say the detectors can only do so much. It is only one weapon in a much larger battle. “The reality is, we want our schools to be healthy places for our students to learn and thrive, and this is just a step in being able to do that,” Gonzales said.
