The ALA has also launched the Vape-Free Schools Scholarship Fund, which aims to raise $400,000 with the aim of helping 1,000 schools set up the programme.
Amongst the Vape-Free Schools Initiative’s goals, is providing educators with more effective strategies than suspensions in handling teens caught vaping in schools. “The reason we want an alternative to suspension program is because if you suspend kids for using a very addictive substance, then they are more likely to stay home and vape and they’re missing out on educational opportunities,” says Ellen Penrod, Executive Director of the American Lung Association in Colorado, where high school tobacco use rates are at 28%.
The programme, includes a ten-week program that takes students caught vaping through the entire quitting process, and costs $400 per school to get it set up. To this effect the ALA has launched the Vape-Free Schools Scholarship Fund, which aims to raise $400,000 to serve 1,000 schools by the end of 2021. Any school can apply to receive the funding, and interested parties may donate at Lung.org/scholarship.
Vermont schools are also believed to endorse the programme. Many public health experts have long been insisting that a forbidding stance which includes school suspensions does not work, and that an educational approach should be more effective.
Anti-Vape Campaigns Are Likely Counterproductive to Fighting Teen Vaping
