When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much could be taken from her.
Suddenly, the rest of her high school experience was threatened: being student council president, her role as debate team captain and walking at graduation. Even her college scholarships were at risk. She was sent to the district’s alternative school for 30 days and told she could have faced criminal charges.
Like thousands of other students around the country, she was caught by surveillance equipment that schools have installed to crack down on electronic cigarettes, often without informing students.
To bring that forward a generation, there was a period around 2013-2014 when vaping was brand new and schools hadn’t written any rules yet.
I remember kids vaping in class and some teachers being kinda okay with it, or at least turning a blind eye. Granted, only like 1 or 2 people in the school had vapes.