No Child Should Be Threatened With Gunfire Over a Vape

What are we doing to our kids?

May 30, 2026

It’s like a scene out of a movie, “STOP! Or I’ll shoot!”

But it’s not a movie. The “dangerous criminal” being threatened with gunfire was a scared 17-year-old running away because he had been caught with a vape.

A VAPE!

Things have changed a lot in the 50 years since I was in high school. Well, some things are still the same. Kids test the limits, they take risks, they experiment with things they shouldn’t, and it’s still a thrill to try not to get caught.

What has changed is the consequences for being a kid. Let’s take a trip to the classroom and compare.

Today is World Vape Day (WVD). I intended to write something warm and fuzzy and share stories from people around the world who celebrate how products like vapes helped them stop smoking. I thought I’d then veer off to the messaging we’ve been assaulted with for the last month, leading up to tomorrow’s World No Tobacco Day. Most of it was done on social media by the WHO and other public health groups.

Very little of that messaging was about the harms of smoking or ways to help people stop. There was an abundance of messaging pushing for a nicotine-free society, going on and on about the evil industry, the exaggerated (or untrue) harms of vaping, and how all of that connects to some conspiracy to addict the next generation of kids to nicotine. I guess if they’re going to talk about vapes, they have to steer towards a nicotine-free society because there is no tobacco in a vape, and it is World No Tobacco Day…sigh.

The endless stream of misinformation is nothing new. My WVD pieces in 2024 and 2025 also talked about the misinformation we deal with every day.

After that little rant, I was going to steer back to the positive, reductions in adult smoking rates, and how fewer teens are smoking or vaping, etc, etc, and then end with pondering how many fewer people would be smoking if only the messaging remained about smoking, like it was years ago, but modernized to include harm reduction.

That plan was rejected after reading a report noting that most Texas school districts have their own police forces and police on duty at every school. The plan was initiated to help prevent school shootings. But as with most of our best intentions, little thought was put into the unintended consequences.

This report is a must-read. What is happening in Texas is happening across the United States and in other countries. After reading that report about Texas, I’m sitting here in a flood of angry tears, knowing things aren’t getting better for our young people. You can find the report here: Texas School Police Pepper-Sprayed, Tackled and Tasered Students.

I wrote about the detrimental effects of zero-tolerance policies in our schools and the dire consequences to the mental health of young people who vape in 2023. By the time I wrote that piece, I had compiled heartbreaking notes about teens who vape and are subjected to being criminalized and having to go to court, tased, strip-searched, physically and verbally abused by law enforcement officers, suspended, sent to alternative schools, monitored by drug sniffing dogs, and robbed of their privacy in the restroom.

Police are needed when there is an actual emergency. When a child has a weapon, when someone is being seriously hurt, when there is a credible threat, adults have a duty to protect students. That is not what I am talking about here.

I am talking about what happens when the tools created for emergencies get used for ordinary discipline.

In the Texas article that knocked me off my original plan for this piece, reporters described school police being pulled into incidents that once would have been handled by a teacher, principal, parent, counselor, or coach. The first vaping-related example I saw was the third video in the report. I wish I could unsee it. Here is a screenshot of the video and caption:

Source: Texas School Police Pepper-Sprayed, Tackled and Tasered Students.

It was very hard to watch the officer escorting a 14-year-old down the hall with his hands restrained behind his back. Suddenly, the officer whipped him toward the wall. His face and body hit hard. He collapsed to the floor. Then the officer jerked him back to his feet by one of the arms tied behind his back. How traumatic for that child and for all the kids who were in the school hallway and witnessed the brutality.

Here’s a prime example of why some teens don’t trust the police.

The video made me cry, and my hands shook. Even though I was sitting alone with no one to speak to, a stream of profanity escaped my mouth.

I had to walk away from the computer and take a break before I could continue reading the report. I figured there couldn’t be anything worse than that in there and felt safe reading the rest of the information.

I was wrong.

Further down in the report was another example of a vaping incident at a school and how the on-duty officer handled it. Here is a screenshot of the event’s description:

Source: Texas School Police Pepper-Sprayed, Tackled and Tasered Students.

And it is not only the students above. Law enforcement responses to behavior and school-rule issues are occurring in schools across the country. Vaping has become one of the words adults use to justify treating children as threats instead of children.

A student caught with a vape can be beaten, tased, suspended, expelled, sent to an alternative school, ticketed, fined, arrested, hauled into court, searched, humiliated, or treated like a criminal before anyone has taken the time to ask the most important question: What is going on with this kid?

This is what happens when adults decide the problem is the object in the child’s pocket instead of what’s going on with the child standing in front of them.

I know some people will say, “Well, they should have followed the rules.” And yes, of course, kids should follow rules. But kids have always broken rules, tested limits, and experimented with things they probably shouldn’t.

What feels different now is how quickly adults can turn a kid breaking a school rule into a police matter. One minute, it is a vape. The next minute, it is a search, a court date, handcuffs, a violent takedown, or an officer pointing a weapon at a child. That is the opposite of public health.

That should terrify parents, teachers, school board members, public health professionals, and anyone who remembers what it was like to be young and do something stupid.

But alas, just like when I was in high school, kids will be kids, and for a variety of reasons - everything from peer pressure, to looking for relief from a hard life, to seeking the next thrill - some kids use nicotine. Many of them also drink alcohol or use other substances.

For the life of me, I cannot comprehend why we need to use violence on a child who is breaking a rule, to tase them, point a gun at them, swear at them, and throw them in a squad car. Nor should there be a need to strip-search a kid at school because they might have a vape.

What is happening to these kids is a tragedy. It is the fault of the adults in the world — the ones inciting a moral panic in their crusade to wipe the planet of nicotine use. Our kids have been caught in the crossfire. 50 years ago, when I was a teen who smoked, I was never subjected to what our kids are being subjected to now. I didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

And kids in 2026 don’t deserve that treatment either.

I am left with not an ounce of celebratory energy for these two days we are observing this weekend. I am filled with anger. My heart hurts for these kids, and I’m worried about them. I dread the thought that our next school shooting could be a law enforcement officer shooting a scared kid in the back.

A kid who ran away because they got caught with a vape.

Until next time…

Notes:

• I create these newsletters as a personal project. They are not affiliated with any current or past employers or groups with which I volunteer. I receive no financial compensation for my efforts to create these newsletters. Thank you to those who have offered to fund this project and compensate me for my time and effort. This is my gift to those interested in nicotine. Community service is important to me. Volunteering is something I have done since I was a child.