When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much could be taken from her.
Suddenly, the rest of her high school experience was threatened: being student council president, her role as debate team captain and walking at graduation. Even her college scholarships were at risk. She was sent to the district’s alternative school for 30 days and told she could have faced criminal charges.
Like thousands of other students around the country, she was caught by surveillance equipment that schools have installed to crack down on electronic cigarettes, often without informing students.
tbf, that’s exactly how freedom is supposed to work. We very specifically don’t want them to actually effectively force the student body to cease all tobacco activities. That’s draconian and should be unacceptable.
I agree, but I also think there has to be more work done on prevention and cessation of teen smoking and vaping. I started smoking when I was 14 and I didn’t quit until I was in my mid-20s. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I was also only able to quit because I worked in an office where literally every other person smoked, so I got plenty of it second-hand.
Yeah, there was a lot more freedom back then. It felt pretty good as a teenager having so much independence. In my school, we could even leave campus during our open periods. At some point, schools started seeing things like that as a liability for them. Can’t help but think things really started to change after Columbine.