Vaping is a serious issue, no question about it

There is no IF about it. You KNOW that under age vaping IS a SERIOUS problem in your community when the local school board sends out an open letter to the community urging stores that sell vaping products to place them behind the counter, like Corbin did last week.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

We aren’t just talking about teenagers here.

Corbin Elementary School Principal Chris Webb told the Corbin Board of Education during its recent monthly meeting that the school is taking quite a few vapes off fourth and fifth graders.

Back in March of 2019, I interviewed then Williamsburg Police Chief Wayne Brid about underage vaping. At the time, we were talking about it in the local high schools and now we are talking about fourth and fifth graders.

There are a whole host of potential issues with kids vaping that many people probably haven’t even considered.

For instance, if you see your kid vaping or you find their vaping device, they might just be inhaling an aerosol form of nicotine – plus who knows what other chemicals are in the vape – that came from a local store. Then again, they may also be inhaling an aerosol form of a highly potent version of THC, which is the active ingredient in marijuana that makes people high.

Those of you adults thinking, “I know what marijuana smells like and would know whether my kid is vaping it,” had better think again.

The problem is that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference by the look of the nicotine or marijuana cartridge or the smell that it gives off while vaped.

Don’t feel bad. The police can’t tell the difference either from just looking at it or smelling it.

When smoked through vape, it doesn’t put off a marijuana odor. (Not that any of you adults reading this column would know what marijuana smells like when it’s smoked…LOL.) The only real way to know if its marijuana is if its field tested, a drug dog alerts after sniffing it or the student is obviously impaired after smoking it.

Common marijuana vapes, like some seized by Williamsburg police three years ago, are 85 – 90 percent pure THC. This can cause cannabis toxicity that can make people very sick, especially younger kids.

It would also be easy to take liquid fentanyl and inject in one of the cartridges meaning that your kids could quickly end up dead buying something off the street that they think is marijuana but is actually laced with fentanyl.

Placing vaping devices and products behind counters, or placing them in secure areas of the store that only adults can go into, would be a good start to help curb under age vaping.

If local government entities, such as the Corbin City Commission, Williamsburg City Council and Whitley County Fiscal Court can’t mandate this by ordinance, then at the very least these entities need to pass resolutions encouraging it. Then they need to hand deliver copies of those resolutions to businesses that sell vaping products.

In fairness, it should be noted most businesses that are selling vaping products probably aren’t selling to underage people, but we have to do something to help prevent fourth and fifth graders from getting it and putting vapes behind the counters is a reasonable precaution to take.

If the police find that stores are deliberately and intentionally selling vapes to underage children just to make a few extra bucks, then criminal prosecutions need to be made, if possible. Also, we, as a community, need to boycott those stores.

Now let me switch gears before I conclude this column, and send out my condolences to the family of Marian Colette, who died Saturday at Baptist Health Corbin at the age of 76.

She was founder and director of Whitley County Communities for Children, a regional director of Save the Children, and taught GED. She was a pioneer in our community as a teacher, community leader, and advocate for Whitley County and the town of Williamsburg.

In addition, she was also part of the Williamsburg Action team, which was the group that helped save the Lane Theater by purchasing it from the City of Williamsburg in August 2002.

I’m not sure that I ever met anyone, who was more passionate about her many community causes, than Marian was. It was something that you truly had to admire about her.