By: Janessa Castro Cruz

All over the world, but mostly in the schools of the United States, children under 18 use e-cigarettes, vapes and carts more than any other tobacco product. The smoking begins to start as early as 6th grade. Teachers around the world claim to see it more in middle schoolers and in older students, it’s harder to tell as they get better at hiding it.

Smoking has a huge impact on students’ mental health and they either depend on nicotine or cannabis during the school day. School smoking policies can be difficult to apply to students, and many require proof of possession which has made students more capable at hiding their products. Tobacco and nicotine products are daily issues in schools and in children, and educators report that “it’s everywhere”.

The World Health Organization released 2 statements: to “free schools from tobacco and vapes” and a “nicotine and tobacco free school toolkit”.

The toolkit is a guide for schools to create nicotine and tobacco free environments, and it also contains topics on how to support students to quit and implement policies and how to enforce them.

Some of the guides for schools to implement a nicotine and tobacco free environment are:

• Banning nicotine and tobacco products on school campuses
• Refusing sponsorship or engagement with tobacco and nicotine industries
• Banning direct and indirect ads and promotion of nicotine and tobacco products near schools
• Prohibiting the sale of nicotine and tobacco products near schools

School-wide policies are difficult to enforce when it comes to tobacco use; some schools all over the world have requested for stronger policies and some educators only use the school resources while others demand a social wide shift. A lot of schools worldwide were successful at implementing those policies after the WHO’s statements were released, and were also successful in implementing policies that support tobacco and nicotine free environments. Even though the tobacco use in schools is still big, schools try their hardest to apply those rules.