Wednesday Nov 14, School Resource Officer Evans hosted an informational meeting in the library, along with guest speakers Principle Roenicke and GJHS RN Melissa Mcconnell. During this meeting, audience members were educated on what drugs to look out for such as the different types of vaporizers, drugs, drug paraphernalia, and results from using these items.  

Although the school policies prohibit substance abuse, Evans felt the need to reiterate these rules because of the recently introduced Juul.

“Vaping has become a major issue in the past eight months,” Evans said, “Because one Juul cartridge is equal to 20 cigarettes”.

Serious health effects of vaping are nicotine addiction, popcorn lung, and if vapor juice gets absorbed into the skin it can cause an overdose.

According to the GJHS Student Handbook, “smoking, use of smokeless tobacco, possession or use of any e-cigarette/vaporizer, (regardless of contents), is prohibited on any part of the Grand Junction High School campus and is grounds for disciplinary action”.

A tobacco product is described as any substance that contains nicotine or tobacco. Because nicotine is extremely addictive, the district board believes that tobacco smoke in the school and work environment is not conducive to good health. According to Principle Roenicke a big part of the drug/vaporizer use is because of the “cool factor ”.  

Any use of marijuana, cigarettes/vaporizers, or alcohol results in serious disciplinary actions. If a student is found vaping,  their substance will be taken away and they will receive in-house detention with a phone call to their parents.

“The board adopted the policy to where if an athlete is caught vaping, they will receive an athletic strike,” Roenicke said, “because we treat vaping as tobacco use.”

An athletic strike includes detention, losing privileges and expulsion from extracurricular activities.  

Because of the trend, according to RN Melissa Mcconnell, vaping is, unfortunately, another new drug that we’re trying to get ahead of. Mcconnell also provided additional ways of learning more about substance abuse and how to stop it, such as ‘thetruth.com’ and ‘Colorado Quitline’.