Children smoking in bathrooms and throwing their butts down the toilet to avoid getting caught was a 20th century cliché. But the 21st century version is causing some real problems for one Maryland school. Plastic vaporizers do not discharge as well as paper-wrapped tobacco.
At least four toilets were destroyed last month after children threw vapes at Bel Air High School in Harford County, according to a report from the CBS affiliate. WJZ. Each toilet reportedly costs the school $200 when replaced. Some of the bathrooms have also just been repaired instead of bought new.
There was a time when every school bathroom had a toilet that didn’t flush because someone threw a vaporizer at it, according to WJZ. The school will now screen students for vaping devices using a metal detector wand.
“Due to the frequency and severity of the problem, the School Safety Liaison began using a metal detector wand to detect vaping devices on students as an interim measure in an effort to address this growing problem,” the Harford County School District said in a statement to CBS.
Vaping took off over combustible tobacco and cannabis products in the late 2010s, but cigarettes still have a slight advantage over e-cigarettes with american adults. But vaping is more popular among children.
Tobacco use rates among youth are near historic lows: Only 10.1% of high school students use any tobacco products and 7.8% use e-cigarettes for smoking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and PreventionNational Youth Tobacco Survey 2024. The annual study, which began in 1999, was canceled by the Trump regime in 2025.
A selling point for switching from combustible tobacco products, such as cigarettes, to vaping products was that people believed it was healthier. And while they are better in theory according to harm reduction theories, they have their own problems. A new study out of Australia found that e-cigarettes can cause cancer.
“Nicotine-based e-cigarettes are likely to be carcinogenic to humans who use them, causing an undetermined burden of oral cancer and lung cancer,” one article says. published Monday in the magazine Carcinogenesis.
Health issues aside, you really don’t want to flush things down the toilet that aren’t meant to be flushed. Adult wipes, sometimes sold as “men’s wipes,” for example, are marketed as disposable when they can wreak havoc in city sewer systems. It’s best to stick with the toilet paper and leave the wipes and spray types out of it.
