For most of the last decade, Florida schools have struggled to head off a growing challenge: more and more students are vaping.

By 2019, the state identified e-cigarettes among the most used substances among middle and high schoolers, with Hillsborough leaders estimating 1 in 4 students had vaped.

But a mere four years later, vaping grew way more prevalent.

According to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of state and district data from the most recent school year available, 2023-24, tobacco-related incidents in Florida schools surged in recent years, and most now involve vaping.

Schools across the state recorded about 24,000 tobacco incidents nearly two years ago. While lower than the previous two years, that total was about 30% more than the year before COVIDhit.

Vaping — by far — was the primary culprit during that span. Of every 10 tobacco incidents in Pinellas and Pasco counties, at least nine involved vaping.

While Hillsborough County Public Schools reported a much lower vaping rate, a spokesperson said tobacco cases may have been undercounted because of recordkeeping changes in the district.

Vaping’s popularity among students comes as other infractions, such as fighting and bullying, remained steady. Its rise defied new laws and millions in court settlement money targeting its use in schools.

And it’s become so widespread, said Pasco Superintendent John Legg, that vaping has become a “big problem — believe it or not — in our elementary schools.”

Legg and others urge tougher penalties for violations, including referral to a drug awareness course after the first offense. In Pasco, new schools will be equipped with vape detectors in restrooms — an initiative that has seen mixed results elsewhere, such as in Pinellas.

Yet for districts, there’s no obvious solution.

In both Pinellas and Pasco, reported tobacco incidents skyrocketed from 2016-17 to 2018-19, according to the Times’ analysis of data from the Florida Department of Education’s School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting system. The post-pandemic numbers climbed higher.

The most recent data collected shows a slight dip in the total, but among Pinellas elementary schools, the Times analysis found, tobacco cases grew again.

The rise in vaping partially undoes decades of work that went into reducing youth cigarette smoking, said Michelle Mercure, national director of tobacco programs at the American Lung Association. At one time, as many as 39% of children had smoked cigarettes, she said.

Vapes are tech-friendly — some of them have games on them. They come in exotic flavors and are easy to conceal. Many people don’t fully understand the harms, health experts say, which include respiratory failure and lung damage. Mercure said many kids who vape might think cigarettes are gross.

“Kids know that cigarettes are bad for you. I don’t think they know that vapes are bad,” said Dr. Gary Salzman, a researcher and professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. “And so I think that education really has to come to the kids, to the parents, to teachers, to identify this is really a problem.”

Clearing the air

Florida legislators have tried to crack down.

A law that took effect in October began to phase out sales of single-use nicotine vapes marketed to children.

Around the same time, electronic cigarette manufacturers accused of marketing to children reached several national and statewide settlements with districts, paying hundreds of millions of dollars.

Among those settling were the makers of Juul electronic cigarettes. They reached a $235 million settlement with more than 1,500 school systems nationwide in 2023, including 26 in Florida. This spring, the state reached a separate $79 million settlement in which the company is prohibited from targeting Florida youth and must comply with advertising restrictions.

Hillsborough schools accepted $3.1 million before legal fees; Pinellas schools nearly $1 million. Pasco did not participate in the lawsuit.

Districts are spending the settlement money in different ways.

Last year, Pinellas County decided to give vape detectors a test run on four campuses — Palm Harbor University, Clearwater, Pinellas Park and Seminole high schools.

This year, officials chose not to use them in more schools. Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Dull said the detectors didn’t provide enough useful information fast enough. At first, alerts went to administrators’ email accounts, but they arrived up to 45 minutes late.

The timing improved after the messages were shifted to texts, but staff still had to check security footage and conduct investigations to determine who had violated the code of conduct, which was amended five years ago to include vaping. Steam cleaners used by custodians also often set off the alarms.

Dull spoke instead of the importance of keeping track of areas where kids were known to vape, in addition to offering counseling to students.

Dull added that vaping incidents appeared to decline last year, an unintended offshoot of new state laws requiring schools to lockmore campus doors, gates and access points when students are present. With fewer students roaming the halls unsupervised, there was less opportunity for vaping, she said.

Hillsborough, which in 2019 passed a proclamation against vaping, has begun pilot programs at some schools to detect vape use.

The district this year tightened policies to model other counties in the state so that vaping is treated as an equal offense to tobacco use. While underage vaping is against the law, board member Lynn Gray said the district did not wish to involve law enforcement because they wanted to keep students in school. But she said she did hope the district would crack down.

“Do you want to be benign with behavior problems, or do you want to go ahead and get this stopped?” she said. “Let’s get a bit tougher.“

Pasco County announced this year that all school construction projects will include vape detectors, funded by the district, starting with the ongoing reconstruction at Gulf Middle School.

Officials also announced raisingthe consequences for vaping on campus to include a required drug awareness course after afirst offense and revising several policies to spell out vaping as a tobacco use violation.

Beyond telling kids what to do, though, the district aims to have students lead the charge.

Administrators last week discussed having middle and high school student leaders launch anti-vaping campaigns for their own schools. At a session planned for Sept. 9, participants in Pasco’s Student Congress hone messages that will become the backbone of their school-based initiatives.

Tobacco Free Florida is collaborating on the project, which could become a blueprint for other districts if successful.

District spokesperson Jessica Meek, one of the officials involved in the campaign, suggested the students likely would come up with better messaging than the adults.

“Kids relate to kids,” she said.

Mercure, from the American Lung Association, said an education and intervention model, where students are taught about the impacts of nicotine and addiction, can work for schools, provided they offer support when students and families are ready.

“Hopefully we haven’t lost,” he said.

Times staff writer Divya Kumar contributed to this report.

Nakylah Carter and Jeffrey S. Solochek are reporters covering education as members of the Tampa Bay Times Education Hub in partnership with Open Campus. You can contribute to the hub through our journalism fund by clicking here.