Calvert County health official warns of rising teen vaping; schools report middle‑school and high‑school use

Rebecca Sayer, tobacco prevention and cessation coordinator at the Calvert County Health Department, told Commissioner Catherine Grosso on the program See Through the Mist that vaping and nicotine pouches are now the central forms of addiction she is encountering among adolescents in Calvert County schools. Sayer said students in middle and high schools are using a range of products — including ZYN pouches, JUUL‑style pods and disposable devices — many of which, she said, contain far more nicotine than people expect.

Sayer described school responses and student behavior. She said schools typically impose an internal suspension for students caught vaping, employ teachers to patrol hallways and have installed bathroom sensors that can detect vaping aerosols but may not always allow staff to catch students in the act. “When I was at one of the schools … we found five kids … all of them vaping,” Sayer said, recounting a teacher’s report of students hiding and vaping behind a bathroom stall. She also said students sometimes hold the vapor in to reduce visible mist and avoid detection.

Why it matters: Sayer framed her warnings around nicotine’s effects on a developing brain and the difficulty parents and schools face identifying concealed devices. She said nicotine exposure before full brain maturity (around age 25) can alter development and that device makers are marketing products and flavors that appeal to minors. “They’re using these kids as guinea pigs,” she said, adding that the industry has shifted e‑cigarettes away from initial cessation aims toward products that deliver high nicotine levels.

Sayer relayed specific product claims from her outreach work. She stated that a JUUL pod can have the nicotine equivalent of about 37 cigarettes and said she has seen references that some larger disposable devices can hold the equivalent of hundreds of cigarettes. She also repeated findings she described as from independent tests that “99 percent of vapes that say that they’re nicotine free, they have nicotine in them.” These figures were presented by Sayer as her department’s or other independent testing results; they were cited on the program and are reported here as speaker assertions and not independently verified by this article.

Sayer said age‑verification and retail practices contribute to youth access: the legal purchase age is 21, she noted, but students obtain devices through permissive clerks, coworkers with scanned IDs, or adults who buy products for minors. She also described how manufacturers and students disguise vapes to look like sweatshirt drawstrings, pens, USB drives or wearables, making concealment in classrooms straightforward.

Local response and education: Sayer described a growing in‑school prevention effort called Vaping Unplugged, a peer education club being launched in at least three schools in the county to educate students and provide peer support. She urged parents to learn the look‑alikes, watch for behavioral signs (changes in grades, social withdrawal, not eating) and to be aware of online signals such as emoji use that students may use to reference vaping.

Health context and secondhand exposure: Sayer warned about chemical byproducts from heating vape liquids and cited formaldehyde among the carcinogens that can form when e‑liquids are vaporized. She also offered an anecdote — attributed to an OB doctor in her example — about a placenta that appeared discolored that the physician linked to secondhand smoke exposure; Sayer presented the anecdote as an illustrative clinical example rather than as a systematically verified study.

Advice from the health department: Sayer told viewers that adults who smoke or vape should minimize exposing others and recommended vaping or smoking outdoors and away from others. “It is your responsibility to protect the people around you,” she said.

What's next: The program highlighted ongoing prevention work in Calvert County schools and urged parent education and community awareness as primary next steps. Commissioner Catherine Grosso closed by thanking Sayer and the Calvert County Health Department for the information and outreach.