Colonel Gray High School cracking down on students vaping

Colonel Gray High School in Charlottetown is taking a tougher approach to students using e-cigarettes and vaping products on school property.

Some Island schools have saidthey're continuing to see more and more students using e-cigarettes, or vaping, as it's commonly known.

Officials at Colonel Graysent out a noticeto parents on Sunday afternoon, informing themthatvaping at school is a growing problem.

After weeks of issuing warnings to students caught with the products, the school has decided to take it a step further by automatically confiscating the vaping products and not returning them to students.

Officials with the school have also said they areconsidering suspensions.

As a school system, we're not in the enforcement business.Dale McIsaac, principal, Charlottetown Rural

Enforcement up to schools

While the Public Schools Branch has made it policy that vaping products aren't allowed on school grounds, it said it leaves enforcement of the policy up to each individual school.

The school's approach isn't surprising, said Parker Grimmer, the branch's director.

"As we continue to move on and become more and more aware of the dangers of this product, there's an expectation that schools will be more and more rigid," he said.

"It's against the law.It's not to be done on school properties, by any of us you, I, or anybody. So to say, 'Well it's okay for a student to,' is not where high schools are at right now."

'Make sure we communicate'

Charlottetown Rural, the city's otherhigh school, is taking a different approach to the problem.

When students are caughtwith the products for the first time at the school, they are given a warning, then told about the risks of vaping, and parents are notified, saidDale McIsaac, the school's principal.

He said while the school does confiscate vaping productsfrom students, they're always returned to them at the end of the day.

"It belongs to them, and if they promise not to use it on school property, we give it back to them," McIsaac said.

"They own it. As a school system, we're not in the enforcement business. We're not very good at the enforcement business. We're in the education business," he said.

We want them to be healthy.Parker Grimmer, Public Schools Branch

Grimmer saidthe Public Schools Branch is receiving a growing number of questions from principals at Island schools on how to best deal with vaping at school.

He saidwhile enforcement is one part of the equation,the branch and the Department of Education have also put more focus on teaching students about the health risks associated with vaping through the school curriculum and presentations.

"The whole purpose of education is to help people grow up to have great and wonderful lives, we want them to be healthy," Grimmer said.

"The health risks involved with vaping are maybe unknown to some of our students, as we're learning, but we're becoming well informed about them so we need to make sure we communicate that and we're doing that as best we can."

According to the most recent survey, the branch said 17 per cent of Island junior high and high school students reported using an e-cigarette in the past month.

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