Editor’s note: The following is one of the letters from students in teacher Jennifer Mansour’s class at Learning Expeditions.
As Squamish gets bigger and schools get fuller, more and more students ranging from grades 7 to 12 and some younger are exposed to the use of drugs and a newer form of smoking known as “vaping” or an e-cigarette.
As a teenager myself, I use all different types of social media such as Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. While often scrolling down my social media, at least 75 per cent of the time, I always come across videos and pictures of underage students doing drugs, vaping and drinking.
With the amount of times I have seen it and heard about old friends of mine getting suspended for use of drugs and vaping, the more I think that something more than suspension should be done for students that get caught or reported for vaping or doing drugs on school grounds. I think for students that get suspended there should be an after school or lunch hour class talking about substance abuse and the side effects.
Out of 25,000 students from grades 7 to 12, a study that took place in September this year by public health investigators showed that in Canada 10 per cent of students have used a e-cigarette before. While this a similar study showed that 19 per cent of students have used an e-cigarette.
In the past two years, the number of students who claim to have used a e-cigarette has gone down by around nine per cent and even though that is a big decrease, there are still a lot of students that use an e-cigarette. From my point of view, I believe the numbers are only rising, and something needs to be done in schools before more complications begin to arise and it becomes an issue where students are suffering from life-threatening problems.
