Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University have found that vaping devices confiscated in the region mainly contained nicotine, with a fraction having cannabinoids.
Vaping devices confiscated from students in Virginia schools last year mainly contained nicotine, but a fraction had chemicals found in cannabis plants, and newer devices pose health risks to kids using them, according to researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University.
During a joint School Board and Board of Supervisors meeting in Loudoun County last week, leaders were briefed on new trends connected to vaping in schools.
Since 2019, VCU has analyzed vaping devices confiscated from students at Virginia schools. Some of the devices reviewed are from Northern Virginia, including in Loudoun County.
The initiative launched as a result of some school leaders worrying that kids were putting cocaine into vapes. It’s since evolved to create a snapshot of what’s inside the devices and who’s using them.
Researchers evaluated about 1,300 devices taken away during the last school year. Eighty-three percent had nicotine, and 14% had cannabinoids, according to VCU data.
“The kids continue to have access to them, and we monitor how the devices themselves are evolving,” Michelle Peace, a professor of forensic sciences at VCU, said. “Because it’s always necessary to chase what the kids have access to.”
In the Northern district, Peace said, 30% of the vapes were cannabinoids.
Dual chamber devices, Peace said, have become increasingly popular in recent years. They have two e-liquids in different chambers and, depending on the device, they can be mixed together or used one at a time. In some, one liquid is nicotine and the other is a cannabinoid, Peace said.
But, in others, both are cannabinoids.
Some of the newer devices have a fidget element to them, and some feature games. One brand allows users to treat a vape pen as a pet, which is kept alive by inhaling the pen.
“Tracking all of these things in terms of how they are appealing to children continues to be important to us,” Peace said.
Because students sometimes share vaping devices, researchers tested them to determine whether they have yeast, mold or bacteria. Some vapes fail those tests, Peace said.
“Do they leave the device and get into the aerosol so that you’re inhaling them into your deep lung tissue?” Peace said. “And so the answer was absolutely yes.”
The aerosol is “more loaded than the device itself,” Peace said. Inhaling those substances could lead to fevers, headaches, hacking coughs or pneumonia.
The number of vapes with nicotine decreased, but cannabinoid vapes increased, according to Peace’s presentation. But some elementary school students are also starting to use vapes.
Vaping devices are sometimes mislabeled, Peace said, so it can be hard for students to know exactly what product they’re using.
As part of the briefing, Peace described the prevalence of bakeries, dispensaries and social clubs in Virginia’s unregulated cannabis market. Researchers often engage in surveillance shopping, reviewing the products and checking whether there is misleading or unknown information.
“This is about raising public awareness about the nature of these shops,” Peace said.
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