In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education released Guiding Principles: A Resource Guide for Improving School Climate and Discipline. This resource for schools helps to create positive, safe, and supportive environments that can prevent and change inappropriate behaviors. This guidance also recommends using suspension only as a last resort for serious violations. In fact, school suspension can have long-term impacts. Students who are suspended miss time in the classroom and are at risk for not graduating on time, repeat a grade, drop out, or become involved with the criminal justice system.6 Suspensions also affect a greater proportion of students of color, students receiving special education services, students from low-income families, LGBTQ+ students, and male students. Most young people who vape want to quit. Suspending students who violate a school’s tobacco-free policy is unlikely to help them quit tobacco use, and could alter their academic and future goals. Because young people have been unfairly targeted with marketing tactics, the science of addiction, and long-term consequences of suspension, schools should provide a supportive environment and encouragement to quit using tobacco products, not suspension.
School policies regulating the use and possession of commercial tobacco products, including electronic delivery devices (e.g., e-cigarettes, vaping devices, JUUL, Suorin), often contain punitive measures for student violations. This publication provides sample language and ideas for evidence-based solutions and information as to why these alternative measures may be more effective than suspension and expulsion at addressing student tobacco use and nicotine addiction as part of a school’s Commercial Tobacco-Free Policy.
The Tobacco Prevention Toolkit is a theory-based and evidence-informed educational resource created by educators and researchers aimed at preventing middle and high school students’ use of tobacco and nicotine products. Developing this Toolkit was accomplished by partnering with key stakeholders (educators, parents, and students), others involved in tobacco or health education, and scientists. We also conducted formative research to inform our curriculum, including holding a series of focus groups with students, health educators, tobacco prevention researchers, leaders within the California Department of Education’s Tobacco Control Branch, and basic scientists focusing on tobacco, e-cigarettes, and addiction, to identify the most important content areas that need to be included, delivery strategies that are engaging for youth, and to obtain the latest evidence known about each tobacco product to ensure that the information presented in our curriculum is accurate.