Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) will receive $2 million to purchase vape detection devices after the Montgomery County Council voted unanimously Tuesday to transmit settlement money from the Juul e-cigarette company to the school system.
The funding comes from a state grant created after the Juul vape company was ordered to pay $7.5 million to the state for marketing its products to minors.
More than 5,000 lawsuits from schools, states and counties were part of the settlement. The county signed on to a state lawsuit against Juul in 2019 for marketing its products to youth.
According to MCPS officials, the school system plans to use the funds to install vape detectors in high school bathrooms. The school board voted at its Aug. 20 meeting to move forward with plans to install the detectors, provided the council approved the funding.
According to NPR, school systems across the country are installing vape detectors with funds from the Juul settlement, which totaled $1.7 billion. The detectors cost around $1,000 and are similar in appearance to a smoke detector.
“If you go into too many of our schools, you’ll see cartridges in the trash cans in the bathrooms. It is in an epidemic,” Council President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) said during a press briefing Monday.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), e-cigarettes and vapes are the most popular methods that children and teens use to consume tobacco, and 1.63 million students, or about 6%, across the country currently use e-cigarettes.
In an August interview with MoCo360, MCPS Department of Security and Compliance Chief Marcus Jones said installing the detectors is important because some students use vaping to mask their use of marijuana or other drugs.
“It’s something that’s against the rules that are set in place by MCPS,” Jones said. “So, therefore, it becomes a safety issue.”
Jones did not provide a timeline for installing the detectors, but said the goal is to have them in place in high school bathrooms by the end of the 2024-2025 school year. He said he is looking at vendors and will continue to “push hard” on the measure.
The council hosted a public hearing prior to the vote Tuesday; only one person had registered to speak. Scott Webber, a local real estate agent and founder of the Vaping Awareness Public Education Society, testified against the transmission of funds. He said he does not believe the detectors are effective and that it would be difficult for schools to identify who was vaping.
“Vaping is a vastly superior alternative to smoking,” Webber said. “This is a fiscal folly … the administration [of the detectors] is nonsensical.”
When asked during Monday’s press briefing whether he was concerned about the effectiveness of the detectors, Friedson said it’s “all hands on deck” when it comes to addressing vaping in schools.
“Obviously we want to make sure that the dollars that are being appropriated are being utilized in the best way that they can be,” Friedson said. “Ultimately, who is contracted [to install detectors] and how they’re contracted is the job of the school board, and it’s our job to provide oversight.”
MoCo360 reporter Ashlyn Campbell contributed reporting to this story.
