According to author Nick Galov's 2022 vaping statistics, 25.5% of high schoolers use e-cigarettes. Compared to the 2.4% of teens that vaped in 2019, this percentage is extremely high. 

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As a freshman in high school, I have witnessed countless attempts to lower the vaping rates in my school. I have gone to a number of assemblies in which there are long monologues about the detriments of vaping. Typically, students find those conventions to be extremely tedious. They sit and listen to the speech by force, then leave to go vape in the bathroom.

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E-cigarettes are banned at Westlake High School, but evidently, this expulsion has done very little to diminish the vaping rates. 

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In fact, it is just making students more cunning. 

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As the old adage says, history is bound to repeat itself. Just think of the past. For example, the alcohol abolition of 1933. People were so desperate for alcohol they created speakeasies. These secret bars were frequented by almost all of the population. In fact, in the 1930s, there were approximately 32,000 speakeasies in New York alone. The same amount, if not more alcohol, was consumed during this era in comparison to before the abolition. Prohibition did not preclude alcohol consumption, it just taught people how to be sneakier with their illegal beverages. 

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Ultimately, the government realized this was not working and the 21st Amendment was ratified, ending Prohibition.

This is not the only example of people breaking rules in mass quantities. 

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In fact, marijuana has recently been legalized in New York. Illegal marijuana frauds have been increasing in occurrence to the point where they legalized this drug to lower crime rates. 

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So, if this is obviously the case with student vaping, why are we settling?

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Now, do not get me wrong, this issue is extremely complicated. Vaping in schools is extremely difficult to prevent and the efforts the school is taking to attempt at this are prodigious. 

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However, they are clearly not working. 

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This matter is quite literally life or death. Vaping can lead to various forms of cancer, chronic heart issues, and many more bodily malfunctions. 

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It is often said that our country suffering from a nicotine epidemic. There are so many teenagers throwing their lives away for this flavored air, that many of them are not even expected to live into their late 30s. 

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More time needs to be spent finding a better solution for this imperative issue. I understand it will not be easy; in fact, I can not even conceptualize a potential solution for this major problem. However, the results will save lives and give teenagers the future they are throwing away and that definitely seems worth the effort.