Superior High School Pledgemakers fight back against vaping

May 21—SUPERIOR — Superior High School students will bring their concerns about vaping to Mayor Jim Paine during a special meeting May 28.

The students, members of the Pledgemakers group, have put a focus on prevention this year. They hope to raise awareness in the community about the way vape products have affected their daily school routine and offer solutions.

"I think we really want parents to be aware of what's happening," said senior Bethany Roe, co-president of Pledgemakers. "We want admin to be aware of what's happening in our city and really ... kind of hit with our last punch for what we can do for our community and for our future generations."

"I think every voice matters and if we all come together on the same issue, we can make a change," said Co-President Rosie Huber, a fellow senior.

The group, which consists of students who pledge to remain alcohol- and drug-free, has been active at SHS since 2007. They host events such as blacklight volleyball and trivia games. This year they've added two new outreach activities. In April, Pledgemakers spoke to seventh grade students at Superior Middle School, sharing what they would want to know if they were still in middle school.

"I wanted to let them know exactly what they might be getting themselves into, what they might be encountering in high school," said junior Alton Morrissey, the club's vice president.

It's a problem students said has grown during their years at SHS.

"Our bathrooms are always full of people vaping," Huber said. "There's always a crowd in there, especially during passing time, which takes time out of our school schedules, our classes because we have to go during class versus passing time."

It adds a stress factor, Morrisey said.

"Vape alarms going off ... sometimes smells of pot and really kind of an uncomfortable environment if you're someone who doesn't want to be involved in those kinds of things," Roe said.

The Pledgemakers also planned to speak during the Superior Plan Commission meeting May 15. When the meeting was taken off the calendar, they set up an in-person meeting with Paine to discuss prevention efforts in Superior.

A perfect storm

The addiction deck has been stacked against today's seniors. They were in seventh grade when U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams declared e-cigarette use among youth an epidemic in December 2018.

"They were in the throes of when Juul was huge," said Charmaine Swan with the Northwest Wisconsin Lung Health Alliance.

The pandemic changed the landscape of their eighth grade year with a jump to virtual learning and left them isolated in cohorts as freshmen.

"Then the pandemic happened and this mental health crisis, and now disposable vapes and it's like this perfect storm for addiction," Swan said.

The rising number of smoke and vape shops in Superior adds to the problem. Roe said kids are seeing vape shops on their way to school every day and that desensitizes them to the dangers of vaping. So does social media, Morrissey said.

"We've never seen this level of nicotine addiction in young people really ever before," Swan said, and we need to be doing things to protect our youth.

Solutions

The students have solutions to offer.

"We're just focusing on putting more restrictions on who can access vape shops and where the vape shops are located," Huber said.

They would like to see increased enforcement. According to Morrissey, clerks at the shops "don't really check for age."

He would like to see Superior ban flavored products like Minneapolis and St. Paul have done, although the students said that would take change on a state level.

Education is also vital. That includes sharing information on the dangers of vaping.

"The average nicotine cartridge is an entire pack of cigarettes and some kids are going through a cartridge a day. So that's the equivalent of smoking 20 cigarettes a day," Morrissey said.

The Pledgemakers stressed starting conversations about vaping with children as early as elementary school.

"A lot of parents don't end up having these conversations with their children because they don't even know that it's an issue," Morrissey said.

This year's Pledgemakers have taken their advocacy to the next level, according to adviser Phil Roe.

"This group is something special," he said.

It's something they feel strongly about.

"Addiction is really attacking the youth ... we see that even with the middle schoolers. It's just like it's an ever-growing problem and I feel like we want to be heard and want a brighter future for our generation," Bethany Roe said.