Clear the Air: Vape Conference Held by Indian Hills Middle School

Indian Hills Middle School held its first Clear the Air About Vaping meeting, a conference was led by Youth Prevention Program Manager at Kansas Department of Health Jordan Roberts on Oct. 29, was angled to inform parents about vaping and its effect on kids.

Indian Hills principal, Blake Revelle, decided to host the meeting to provide parents with facts about why vaping is bad which they can then communicate to their kids.

“Statistics to kids don’t mean much, but when parents can speak to their kids about it there’s much more buy-in to the fact that this probably isn’t that good because my parent doesn’t think it’s good,” Revelle said.

Mel Wolf, a parent to elementary, middle and high school students in the district, attended the meeting for this reason.

“As parents we are trying to keep up with all these new trends, social media, TV shows, and vaping, so we can talk to our kids about it,” Wolf said. “Any way we can get information to have those conversations, knowing that our kids already know so much, is beneficial.”

Aside from walking through a slideshow about the results of vaping, including nicotine addiction and possible cancer causing carcinogens, the parents also passed around a Juuland a pack of four pods.

Since Juuls are sleek, easy to conceal and sold in most convenience stores, this vaping product has taken over 72.8 percent of the market, according to Roberts. For most parents, this is what they need to keep their eye out for.

“I liked that we passed [the vaping products] around and I touched it because honestly if I had seen one at my house I wouldn’t have known what it was, I had never seen one in real life,” Wolf said. “The son of a friend of mine found a pod in the church by his house and they knew exactly what it was and they’re in fourth grade.”

As the epidemic grows, younger kids are learning about and starting to vape. Over the last few years, Revelle has seen a steady increase of students getting caught vaping at school and heard more rumors throughout the halls.

To try to diminish the problem, Revelle hopes to integrate an informative tobacco program through Aspire into classrooms. He hopes this can teach students what vapes really contain as well as the side effects involved.

“I do worry about the addiction and what that means for the future,” Revelle said. “You don’t want to get them into [other tobacco products]. I don’t want kids to make decisions in middle school that will affect them for the rest of their lives.”