A pricey purge: Weber School District weighing options amid costs associated with vape disposal
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- In this undated photo, a mass of vapes confiscated from students at schools throughout Weber School District is shown.
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- In this undated photo, a mass of vapes confiscated from students at schools throughout Weber School District is shown.
OGDEN — Although the number of middle- and high-school students vaping has dipped in recent years, the practice continues to be commonplace in Utah’s schools.
According to the latest data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Student Health and Risk Prevention survey, or SHARP, 7.4% of the 52,679 kids surveyed in 2023 used vape products containing nicotine, marijuana or both.
While that number raises serious health-related questions for students and their families, there’s also a financial cost for school districts charged with confiscating and disposing of vapes.
Vapes cannot be simply thrown away due to their hazardous materials classification.
“Because of the lithium battery and the nicotine content, there’s a process that has to be followed as far as the disposal and it’s rather expensive,” Weber School District Public Information and Safety Officer Lane Findlay said.
In the Weber School District, where nearly 1,000 vapes have been confiscated in recent years, that amounts to a $4,000 expense that Findlay and district leadership are currently working to navigate. One potential solution, Findlay said, is to administer fees to offending students.
“It just came up in the conversation of options to try to help cover the expense of the disposal,” Findlay said. “Would it be reasonable if somebody is found in violation and we end up confiscating that device and then we’re responsible for disposing of it? Do we pass that cost on to the person who brought it to school? … We’re just looking at what our options are as we deal with this.”
Findlay said any potential fees would have to be approved through the school board. He added that another option might be to attempt to return vapes to the parents or guardians of offending students. In the end, though, expenses for unclaimed devices would still fall back on the district and, by extension, taxpayers in Weber County.
Under Utah law, first-time possession of tobacco or an e-cigarette by a minor (and other class-C misdemeanors) cannot be referred to law enforcement if it occurs on school grounds. Instead, students are referred to an evidence-based alternative intervention and the materials are taken from them.
“It used to be if somebody was found in violation, possession of tobacco, it was a criminal citation, dealt with by law enforcement and stuff was disposed of. The schools weren’t really as involved. You had a school conduct violation, but we weren’t involved in the actual confiscation of the items. That was usually law enforcement,” Findlay said.
“When the laws changed, that basically made it the responsibility of school districts to deal with first-time offenses. That’s when we get into this realm of now we’re responsible for not only dealing with the possession and the referral to an alternate program but then also now the handling and disposal of the items.”
Findlay used the word “epidemic” to describe the issue of adolescent vaping.
“You’re talking all your synthetic narcotics and different drugs that you now find, too, with THC content. That’s been, I think, the big change is there’s such variation in what we’re seeing in the schools as it relates to different types of devices and different substances that are being abused,” he said.
