It was in physical education class when Laila Gutierrez swapped out self-harm for a new vice.
The freshman from Phoenix had long struggled with depression and would cut her arms to feel something. Anything. The first drag from a friend’s vape several years ago offered the shy teenager a new way to escape.
She quit cutting but got hooked on nicotine. Her sadness got harder to carry after her uncle died, and she felt she couldn’t turn to her grieving parents for comfort. Bumming fruity vapes at school became part of her routine.
“I would ask my friends who had them, ‘I’m going through a lot, can I use it?’” Gutierrez, now 18, told The 74. “Or ‘I failed my test and I feel like smoking would be better than cutting my wrists.’”
It worked until she got caught.
Like students across the country, Gutierrez got dragged into a nicotine-fueled war between vape manufacturers—including a company that leveraged online advertisements on the websites of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network to hook kids on e-cigarettes—and educators, who’ve turned to digital surveillance tools and discipline to crack down on the youngest users. Gutierrez was suspended for a week after she was nabbed vaping in a crowded school bathroom during her lunch hour.
An in-depth investigation by The 74 reveals how nicotine-addicted teens, who often begin vaping under social pressure or, like Gutierrez, to cope with hardship, are routinely kicked out of school instead of receiving meaningful services that could steer them away from tobacco and help them break free of their vape pens.
Candid interviews with a dozen high schoolers and recent graduates from across the country reveal how vaping has become ubiquitous in schools. The battery-powered nicotine sticks are more than an addiction: They define students’ social status, friend groups, and coping strategies years before they’re 21 and legally old enough to buy them.
“At my school, vaping starts because you want to be part of the popular crowd, you want to get invited to parties, you want to feel like you’re a part of a community,” said Ayaan Moledina, a 16-year-old from Austin, Texas. “And you start doing those things because you’re pressured into doing it.” Moledina says he doesn’t vape and has been excluded socially as a result.
Public records obtained by The 74 from a vape-detector pilot program at Minneapolis Public Schools presents a unique window into the severity of the problem and of educators’ efforts to contain it. The main battlefield in the fight is the school bathroom. As they have for generations, teens take cover in the bathroom to socialize and smoke, but because vapes allow them to consume nicotine more discreetly than traditional cigarettes, district leaders are also embracing technological advancements to police them.
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