Alabama schools are set to implement a new system to prevent vaping by public school students in the coming academic year.
HB 8, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Drummond D-Mobile, requires the Alabama State Board of Education to create a model policy for local boards of education to adopt by November.
“[Drummond] wanted an anti-vaping law, so we were able to work with her on something that’s not too overwhelming for the districts, but they are all going to have an anti-vaping policy,” State Board of Education Superintendent Eric Mackey told members of the board in a meeting on Tuesday.
Under the proposed policy, students who are caught vaping once will have their parents contacted and students who are caught vaping twice will have to take a state approved vaping awareness, education and prevention class which includes a curriculum created in collaboration with the Drug Education Council.
The topics covered in the proposed curriculum presented to board members include health consequences, peer pressure, nicotine and addiction, resources to quit vaping and common misconceptions about vaping among others.
According to the Children’s of Alabama newsroom, the media branch for the Children’s of Alabama hospital, nearly 20% of high school students in 2023 said they had vaped.
Some board members at Tuesday’s meeting questioned the need for the vaping law.
“As an educator, parent and grandparent, I don’t quite understand the focus on this and bifurcating or separating from the other common concerns in every discipline policy,” said Wayne Reynolds, who represents District 8 on the board. “Why would you separate what you’re doing to a child caught vaping and contacting the parents than any other child in the discipline policy?”
District 1 Representative Jackie Zeigler raised concerns about children moving onto other drugs like Fentanyl and Xylazine or tranq and pushed for broader language in the law to prevent having to add resolutions to add other specific items such as marajuana into the law.
“I don’t think by labeling it does any justice,” she said. “We need to make it broader so these things fit into it so we don’t have to come back and say, ‘now we have [THC] gummies, and now we have vaping.’”
Mackey agreed that the law is more specific than most Alabama Department of Education policies, but because it’s the law they have to follow it and said the board is “being no more restrictive than the law requires.”
Beginning in the 1995 school year, Alabama schools were required to have a policy prohibiting the usage of tobacco on school property and the Code of Alabama Title 16 Chapter 41 states every county and city school system must have drug abuse and education courses in their curriculum.
The Alabama State Board of Education will vote on the model policy for the law next month.
Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: [email protected].
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