Wiltshire headteacher worried by student vaping trend
Vapes have caused students across the country to end up in hospital
A headteacher in Wiltshire has told Greatest Hits Radio teenagers need to be aware of the possible risks of vaping.
Children across the country, and in Wiltshire, have been hospitalised as a result of dangerous substances, such as THC and Spice, being hidden in vapes.
The Government will ban the sale of disposable vapes at the end of 2024 or early in 2025.
David Cooper is headteacher at Devizes School and says educating children is vital.
He said: "We realise there's a big piece of work to in terms of educating students about the concerns we have from a health perspective, but also from the point of maintaining a safe site where students are.
We know very little about vaping's impact
Vapes were introduced as an aide for people trying to quit smoking, and experts advise non-smokers against taking up vaping.
Mr Cooper's primary concern is that young people are taking up vaping as a habit, despite almost all of them having never smoked.
He said there's decades of evidence associated with smoking, whereas we know precious little about the impact of vaping at the moment.
"We've had systematic gathering of evidence for decades and decades and decades where we know exactly what the health issues associated with smoking are.
"We know the mechanisms by which they affect cells in the body. We understand the risk factors associated with beginning smoking at different ages and the amount you smoke at different ages. There's a whole wealth of data."
"There is no generation of people who vaped through their teens and we don't know it's impacts and we will not know for some time," he said.
Thankfully, at Devizes School, the issue is infrequent, but still closely monitored by Mr Cooper and his staff.
He told GHR: "We do take preventative measures, so we will if we need to and in line with the advice from the Department for Education and the law, we will search students, if we have reasonable grounds to believe they are carrying materials associated with a vape.
"We also have certain sensor systems which have enabled us to detect, act and prevent vaping from happening in school."
While there have been national and local incidents where students have become ill through their use of vapes, Mr Cooper stressed that it is a minority of students who are doing it.