‘There’s a bomb ticking.’ How will Lexington attack teen vaping epidemic?

Seemingly overnight in Lexington, teenagers began illegally buying vaping materials at gas stations and selling them at inflated costs to other students who became addicted to nicotine.

Many young people aren’t realizing the danger to their health and some doctors don’t know enough about the epidemic to ask about e-cigs when kids come to them sick from vaping.

That’s the picture Alex Smith, a sophomore at Lexington’s Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, Jonathan Kincheloe, Assistant Principal of Lexington Catholic High School and others familiar with the problem presented Tuesday when they talked about the epidemic of e-cigarette use, or vaping, in Lexington. The American Heart Association brought local volunteer leaders and school district representatives together to talk about taking steps to turn the tide locally.

“Kids don’t have a grasp on how much they are consuming. When you tell them that they are (the equivalent of a) multi-pack a day smoker, they look at you like you are crazy,” said Kincheloe.

The discussion follows the Fayette County Public School board filing a lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court in Lexington against -e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs and the news that of the confirmed vaping-related illnesses in Kentucky, one involved a boy under the age of 18.

Lexington Catholic officials are conducting random student locker and car searches. When students are caught repeatedly at the faith-based school, they have to enter into a contract for continued enrollment, Kincheloe. It helps if parents “who are battling it every weekend and every evening“ get involved and are even invasive, Kincheloe said.

“It’s scary how big of a problem it’s gotten and how fast,” he said.

Shannon Smith, Kentucky State Director of Government Relations for the American Heart Association and Alex Smith’s mother, said solutions the organization is going to pursue for the 2020 General Assembly include taxation on e-cigarettes and devices, increasing the sale of purchase age for tobacco related products from 18 to 21 and increasing the funding for prevention and cessation by $10 million.

Smith said the American Heart Association is going to immediately pursue community forums, education within schools, partnerships between the local health department and UK, and supporting current programs that involve peer support between younger and older students.

“We’ve addicted an entire new generation of kids. We have to get them off of it,” she said.

Debbie Boian, Health Services Coordinator for Fayette County Public Schools, said vaping and Juuling “is epidemic and it happened almost overnight.”

“It is a nicotine addiction that these students have.” Boian said. “We have more gaps than we do resources.”

Boian said many parents don’t know what’s going on. “If you don’t have parents who are supportive and invasive and communicating with their kids and being their parent and not their friend then you’re not going to make headway with these issues,” she said.

The community is not focused on the problem, Boian said, noting that there needed to be more treatment options for teens who are addicted. “There is a bomb ticking behind us and we are not paying attention to that bomb. We are going to have an explosion of diseases with our youth.”

Alex said older students are making money selling e-cigarette materials to younger students for prices higher than what they purchased it for. She said athletes and good students were using e-cigarettes. “It’s everywhere. It’s in the hallways and the classes... you are kind of lame if you don’t do it.”

Melinda Ickes, an associate Professor at the University of Kentucky studying vaping , said recent research showed that one in four incoming freshman were using Juul. She said the high concentration of nicotine was addicting students.

Staff in a prevention program at UK have been talking to 4,000 Kentucky kids about the dangers of vaping. “We have been in classrooms as young as fourth grade,” Ickes said. Ickes said she did not think students should be suspended when they are caught vaping and that more programs should be built in schools to give students more support.

Attorney Ron Johnson, who is representing both Fayette and Bullitt County school districts in federal lawsuits over vaping, said he has seen inaccurate comments from parents on social media that school districts are spending taxpayer money on the lawsuits, but school districts aren’t spending any funds. Johnson said he is taking the cases on a contingency basis — “I only get paid if I win, they aren’t paying me one dime while the litigation is pending.”

The vaping epidemic “has hammered every school district in almost the same fashion,” said Johnson.

According to the lawsuit filed by the Fayette school board, data collected in the Kentucky Incentives for Prevention Survey demonstrate that the marketing efforts of Juul have simultaneously increased usage of e-cigarettes among students in Kentucky and decreased the recognition of the risks associated with nicotine addiction caused by e-cigarettes. The KIP data shows that in 2018 while 72 percent of 12th grade students in Kentucky recognized the risk of harm from smoking cigarettes, only 39 percent of those same students appreciate risks associated with the use of e-cigarettes.

Between 2014 and 2018, the usage of e- cigarettes among 10th graders increased across all regions of Kentucky by 50-75 percent and in some cases the increase in that time period was as much as 250 percent.

The Fayette schools lawsuit against Juul is asking for compensatory and punitive damage and attorney fees, but those costs have not been determined yet, Johnson said.

This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 4:47 PM.