The newest unhealthy craze in students’ lives is obviously vaping. Look around. I bet you could find at least five or ten kids that vape in every classroom. While this craze is obviously horrible for you, kids still do it, and in classic soccer-mom style, the district is trying to stop it.

Don’t get me wrong, vaping is absolutely horrible for you. I’ve seen the effects that nicotine has on people, and having anywhere from a fifth to 30% of our generation have a nicotine addiction is completely untenable.

Despite that, the way that people are going about the anti-vape movement is completely wrong. We should steer away from the current campaign and go towards a program of how horrible for you it is.

If you talk to basically anyone that vapes, they would say that it isn’t “that bad” or that it’s “better than cigarettes,” but they are just straight up wrong. While they are better than cigarettes, that’s like saying cocaine is better than meth. They are both absolutely the worst.

My reasons from abstaining from the vape pipes isn’t a health concern, but it’s just lame. I don’t even want to be that mainstream. When I’m at work and I’m talking to a customer that seems cool, and then I see a vape in their hand, my regard for them goes down exponentially. I think that if the officials go from a point of how lame it is, then I think vape rates will definitely go down.

I don’t know if nicotine addictions are becoming cool, but I know the damage that nicotine can do to you. Nearly everyone in my family has smoked, and watching them struggle to quit for years has been devastating and I would not wish that pain onto anyone.

Even at that, this anti-vape advocacy towards parents, shouldn’t be framed like it is. On the flyer for the Anti-Vape Parent’s Night, some of the “e-cigarettes” on the flyer aren’t even e-cigarettes at all, they’re wax pens, which contain THC and not nicotine.

Comparing weed to tobacco is equivalent to comparing donuts to crack. While donuts aren’t good if you use it excessively, they won’t kill you if you don’t do it that much, and crack is, well crack.

This phenomenon is completely uncharted territory for parents and everyone. No one really has any idea how to deal with this because kids are stubborn and don’t want to accept the poor choices they are making.

I would never use a vape pen, and I don’t advocate for anyone to do it – in fact I actually completely despise it. However, I think that the way that our school and others are handling the epidemic is antiquated. The “this is your brain on drugs” slogan doesn’t work if the kids don’t think they are doing drugs. While I may not have a complete answer to this conundrum, that does not mean that any answer thrown out there is correct.