Oldham County Schools cracking down on vape use with new detectors

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- They look like smoke detectors, but they're actually vape detectors in the bathrooms at Oldham County high schools.

"It's unfortunate to know how frequently kids are actually vaping," said Rush Sullivan.

Sullivan is the associate principal at North Oldham High School, where he said vaping happens about 50-70 times a day.

The new vape detectors go off about eight times an hour on average during each school day, and those are just the instances school officials know about.

"We weren't naïve enough to think that it wasn't happening frequently," Sullivan said. "The amount that it goes off on a daily basis was just startling at first."

Sullivan is one of many administrators who gets a text every time one of the detectors catches someone vaping.

"We might get one or two while class is going on, but we'll get several in between classes and it's a pretty constant stream from about 8:00 in the morning when we start getting students in the building until about 4:15," he said.

They've been installed in every bathroom at each high school in Oldham County, and can tell if a student is using a vape pen or one with nicotine or THC.

It can also tell if someone is trying to tamper with it.

"If it happens between classes, it's a large crowd, so it's hard to pinpoint," said Sullivan. "We just try to rely on catching them in action."

If a student is caught with a vape pen, administrators will take it away, give the student an in-school suspension and notify their parents.

If it happens more than once, they get alternative suspension at Buckner High. Further disciplinary measures will be taken after that.

If it's THC, the student will get an automatic 3-day suspension.

"If it's during class, I'll pull up cameras if we can't get to the bathroom in time, so I'll pull up the cameras, identify the student and then do a search," Sullivan said.

But he said it's not just to get the kids in trouble. The hope is to get to them early and stop them before they become dependent.

"It's worrisome because we don't know what's gonna happen, and it's highly addictive," said Sullivan. "Students, I don't think, when they first try it realize how quickly they're gonna get addicted and then the lengths they'll go to to use one during the school day is pretty excessive."

Oldham County Schools plan to install the vape detectors at the middle schools next summer.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 470,000 middle school students and 2.5 million high school students said they recently used e-cigarettes this year alone. Nearly 85% of kids reported using flavored e-cigs. That's according to a study published in October by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC.

While the long-term effects of e-cigarettes are still being studied, researchers in Louisville are already finding they may be worse than traditional cigarettes.

Back in October, researchers at UofL found vaping can cause cardiac arrhythmias in animals and humans. 

The study, which was published in Nature Communications, found that the effects of e-cigarettes' could cause sudden cardiac arrest or increase the risk for ventricular fibrillation. 

Scientists found that e-cigarette aerosols caused the animals' heart rate to slow during puff exposures, and sped up afterwards. 

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• 'Highly concerning' l UofL researchers find that e-cigarettes' cause cardiac arrhythmias

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