Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:
EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should’ve looked into posting this in a different community… It’s closer to a silly “innovation”… soo… is this considered FUD? I also don’t support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had “privacy-violating” before the “solution”.
How is this invading someone’s privacy? All it’s doing is detecting if children are smoking in a room or space at school and then putting an alert up about the detection on a screen.
They have zero right to privately smoke at school, or anywhere for that matter, smoking is illegal for children and not something to be taken lightly.
Similarly, adults have no right to privately smoke whilst in the workplace in the bathroom or other non-smoking designated areas. This is also illegal and not to be taken lightly.
I agree. These are anonymous messages. I don’t see any privacy violations.
They could set up camera’s that record who’s entering and leaving the restroom and thus violate privacy but this seems fair play to me. They’ll just vape somewhere else.
They’re not anonymous tho, the image very clearly labels who’s desk the vaping was detected at
Simon’s desk probably refers to a location, not actually the desk of Simon.
It says “Simon’s desk” which is the name of the guy making the post, which to me says he was testing the software from his desk.
When it is deployed, it would say “vaping detected in north stairwell” or whatever. They are not installing sensors on every desk.
Hm, maybe
Most likely
Those things are generally not illegal.
It’s illegal to buy/sell tobacco as/to a minor. It’s not illegal to use tobacco.
Most of the restrictions on smoking are not by law, but policy. 12 states don’t have any sort of ban on tobacco use.
Wow, you’re lame as hell
Is that what we call people who are obviously right now?
You do get that smoking and vaping are the different things right?
pretty wild you can still type with that boot in your mouth. how do you see around it? do you just touch type?
I see critical thinking is not your cup of tea. Might want to take that boot out of your ass.
So you think they will not use this to try to identify the vaping student?
They ought to use it that way if they aren’t. Privacy does not mean “flagrant ability to flout rules or laws”
… good?
Everyone (even kids) have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but children using drugs in school isn’t something that falls under that reasonable expectation of privacy.
Considering they are only harming themselves, no I do not care much
As others mentioned, I think schools should dedicate resources to address this situation through education, instead of paying some start up for some surveillance gadgets
Ding ding ding
They are not just harming themselves. Everyone knows how harmful secondhand smoke is.
From vaping? I think you have vaping and smoking confused
Nope, not smoke per se, but still damaging to breathe.
I think people severely underestimate how harmful it is.
Happy to read about it of you have any source to share
I know vaping is not without dangers but it is a step forward from smoking. I honestly never read anything about second hand vaping fumes
In any case, I am not in favour of vaping in schools. I just think schools should not spend money in these detector crap. They should address it with their best tool, education
Again, we’re talking about actual children. You know: people that have yet to mentally develop to the point where they can make fully informed decisions on everything and sometimes have to be “coerced” by reasonable adults into doing so.
So you didn’t read my second paragraph?
I didn’t disagree with that part. Doing what you suggested and using the “vape detectors” aren’t mutually exclusive.
Well, kind of since I suggested NOT using vape detectors
How would you like this installed in your workplace? How about ankle monitors that detect if you’re jaywalking? What about if your car had a sensor that automatically informed law enforcement if you were speeding. What if your ISP would shut off anytime you watched a video with copyright without permission.
See how bullshit “if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” is?
There’s this wild, outlandish idea that kids don’t have the maturity, experience, or impulse control to make informed and rational decisions all the time. Thus we don’t give kids the exact same rights and responsibilities we give to adults – they gradually gain them as they mature and demonstrate they can handle them.
Yes, because my workplace staffed entirely by people 21+ is the same thing as a school filled with literal children. Also, for some unknowable reason we don’t have issues with people vaping in the building despite having people that smoke and vape. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact none of us are teenagers.
You do know that’s a fallacy, right?
So you think we should all be allowed to smoke in non-smoking places? The school already has all info on all it’s kids, what else “private” is being revealed here? If you break the rules of the establishment where you are, they’ll try to identify and ban you, because that’s how private property and bylaws work. School is no different. If you break the rules you face the consequences.
Is this logical and useful? No. Does it help kids become better and learn? No. Will it actually reduce vaping? No, it’s a leaderboard now.
But is it invading privacy? Also no. It is enforcing nonsensical draconic rules, but not revealing any information that wouldn’t be already known or demanded by the institution in that situation.
Privacy isn’t restricted to just your data on file. You’d expect some sort of privacy in bathrooms (I assume that’s where these would be installed). It can also set a precedent. Maybe they start tracking cellphone use “ensure students are paying attention”. Maybe they start tracking how often students are using the restroom, especially female students to gather data on their cycles (incredibly plausible depending on the state). Maybe they track their exact movements via school wifi. Maybe they give them laptops to spy on them at home. None of these obviously equate to one another but where does the school draw the line? Rather not have this shit in the first place.
That is the whole point of this mess. The alternative is a person or camera INSIDE the bathroom at all times. The camera would be so much cheaper to deploy…but privavcy laws, rightfully, say no.
With the sensor all it does is say “smoke/vape detected”, from there an adult can check the hall cam to see who went in or just go right in to catch the kid.
I assume with the monitor, it makes it easy for a teacher sitting outside the bathroom and can see the popup (in some schools they already have them to check passes and listen for screeming)
No, but I see you need to make up a point I didn’t make so you could attack that.
Lazy strawman, you must be from reddit
Oh the irony. Lol.
Yeah, we have similar sensors at my job. I work in a highly secured facility and smoke/vape detectors are installed in all the bathrooms. It makes the fire alarm go off if detected.
Vaping is not the same as smoking and can be done perfectly safely with no drugs involved at all (i.e. flavor only vapes). It’s barely different than inhaling steam.
Edit: I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, and now think “relatively safely” is a better way of putting this. There’s a few concerns that I’m perfectly happy to live with as an adult, but I get that kids won’t have spent as much time trying to understand the risks.
Imagine defending child vaping 🤮
Lotta Juul fanboys in these comments…
It technically is a kind of steam in fact, actually. Even with drugs involved.
I think it’s literally almost the same shit that’s in fog machines, juice is PG, VG, Flavoring, and Nic, fog machines are (iirc) PG, VG, water, maybe essential oils for smell. You don’t have to use USP food grade VG/PG for the fog though.
Steam is the hot gas that is produced when water is boiled. It’s also completely see through, ie, invisible.
That is not what the vapes produce. It’s a water vapor. That’s why they’re called “vaporisers” and not “steamers”.
I don’t think there’s a need to so pedantic here. Water vapor is the visible part of steam, and for the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about boiling liquids, so I don’t think there was any miscommunication by using the word “steam”
Ah, so you don’t understand the misunderstanding, or you’re purposefully using an illfitting word.
Vaporisers produce vapour.
VAPOUR:
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
noun
a substance diffused or suspended in the air, especially one normally liquid or solid.
"dense clouds of smoke and toxic vapour
There’s no visible part of steam, despite colloquially people sometimes using language in a way that might make you think there is.
So why would you insist on using the wrong word after being corrected? (That’s a rhetoric question, because I already know the answer.)
I understand what you mean. Water vapour (i.e. clouds, fog, the visible part of what comes from boiling water which any normal person would call steam) vs Gaseous water (i.e. most of the atmosphere, and the non-visible part of boiling water also called steam).
Vapes work by boiling PG/VG which starts as a liquid (i.e. the juice), and generates both vapourized and gaseous PG/VG. If it was water, any normal person would consider this steam. This isn’t a chemistry or physics class.
Just because you didn’t pay attention in physics in basic education doesn’t mean no-one did.
When is the last time you heard someone refer to someone’s vape productions as “steam” in real life? “Goddamn vapers steaming all over”?
Vapour and steam are different, because you don’t need 100c for water vapour. Ever heard of clouds? Mist? Fog? None of those are steam, none of those are 100 degrees Celsius, but they are all water vapour.
That’s what vaporisers produce.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/s/lNzhmtSLVW
I’m getting a lot of downvotes, and maybe I’m wrong about what kinds of vapes kids are using? Obviously if they’re using nicotine vapes, that’s bad and chemically addictive.
But I don’t have a problem with kids vaping the drug-free, flavored juice. It can be habit forming, but so can fidget spinners. As long as it’s not actually dangerous then I don’t see the problem.
Regardless of whether there is nicotine or THC, or whatever drug of choice in the vape, studies have shown that vaping is dangerous.
Ah, finally, there’s actual studies showing actual dangers, and not just manufactured bullshit from the cases where bad regulation lead to people vaping acetate E? Can you please link me those studies so I can use link them forwards?
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20191018/Vaping-propylene-glycol-and-vegetable-glycerine-may-lead-to-lung-inflammation.aspx
Ugh, that’s no good! It doesn’t say what you think it does. It shows that they are safe, not that they are harmful.
^ Small sampling.
No difference in between the control group and the vapers?
So I don’t know if you’ve mistakenly been sharing that, but it supports the opposite of what I gather is your view on the matter. I know it might not seem like that if you only read the headline, but I tend to actually read the articles and studies I link myself. You know, to avoid awkward things like this.
This is the first article I found:
https://www.healthline.com/health/side-effects-of-vaping-without-nicotine#with-nicotine
Edit: http://web.archive.org/web/20240523102811/https://www.healthline.com/health/side-effects-of-vaping-without-nicotine
Not readable from EU unless I decide my privacy and data don’t matter at all, which I won’t be doing.
Sorry, here you go:
http://web.archive.org/web/20240523102811/https://www.healthline.com/health/side-effects-of-vaping-without-nicotine
If you’d like to point me at some studies go ahead. The only dangerous cases I’ve heard about were black market vapes that had other contaminants in them. It’s been very hard to find reliable studies because most I’ve seen are self-reported using the entirely generic term “vaping” without any qualifiers on the kind.
The other risk is that black market cartridges have absolutely flooded the market, even getting mixed in with legitimate stock.
That’s certainly a problem. It’s one of the big reasons I think THC vapes should be both legal and regulated. In the states were it is legal, there’s strict inventory tracking every step of the way.
Admittedly it’s a lot harder to get people on board with regulating drug-free vapes, but I think it would be a good idea to have guarantees about what you’re consuming just like food.
The black market carts in question were specifically weed vapes, not nicotine vapes, which are actually more different than you may think. Not only was that not a problem with nic vapes ever, it hasn’t been a problem with homemade weed carts since that one incident (which IIRC was caused by one singular dumbass in WI or MN) either.
There still are “black market carts” for both weed and nic, but they’ve learned not to use vitamin a and are now mostly just regular ol’ knockoffs.
That said however, that’s why it’s always better to use a refillable vape with a bottle of juice over a disposable, they usually don’t counterfeit bottles opting instead for dispos, and even if they did it’s easy to make your own juice so you know what you put inside.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20191018/Vaping-propylene-glycol-and-vegetable-glycerine-may-lead-to-lung-inflammation.aspx
It’s empirical, but I’ve been vaping steadily all day every day since I switched from my 2 pack a day newport habit around 2013ish, give or take a year. Last time I went to the doctor he said I had the healthiest lungs he’d seen in a while.
I was as surprised as you are, frankly. Mostly because of the ports in the past but I guess it’s been long enough since then to heal up my surfboard lung. I mean I did notice marked improvement in my ability to breathe about a month or two into the switch, and my ability to smell things came back shortly thereafter, and then the doc visit was years after that, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised but I digress. In any case 2x daily for a month is pussy numbers, gotta bump those up, try 200 times a day for 10yr and your doc will say your lungs look great if they’re anything like mine.
Well, I’m impressed they actually did test JUST the vape liquid, even though they’re still calling them e-cigs.
Quoting from the journal itself:
The way I read this, it seems like there’s a small correlation with inflammation, but there’s no measurable risk of developing lung cancer from it (they were doing cancer research after all). Personally for an adult, I feel like “inflammation” is kind of a nothingburger, just stop vaping for a while and you’ll be fine. But for kids developing habits, I can understand the concern.
This is the first article I found:
https://www.healthline.com/health/side-effects-of-vaping-without-nicotine#with-nicotine
Edit: http://web.archive.org/web/20240523102811/https://www.healthline.com/health/side-effects-of-vaping-without-nicotine
Well, I guess that’s a point against flavored vapes. I really wish there were more studies, because presumably not all flavorings would have the same effect. A comparison with unflavored e-juice would have been great.
Honestly, I don’t have much of a problem with them even vaping nicotine, especially once we’re talking high school (ages 14-18.) They’re already not allowed to buy it, that’s enough. Sure, sometimes they’ll evade the law and get it, they’ll do it with white claws too, should we ban those? No, and you’d be hard pressed to find some teetotaler to say “yes” to that, but for some reason that goes right out the window when it’s not “the thing they did as kids” but “the new thing they don’t understand.”
I’d be willing to bet flavored alcohol is more damaging to a young brain, more addictive (or at least on par) with nicotine, and what’s more you can actually die from alcohol (and benzo, which the kids are getting too btw, very illegally) withdrawals, but are we banning Ciroc and Xanax and applying the flavor ban logic unilaterally or are we just singling out the vapes because the big pharma and tobacco lobbies successfully propagandized people into doing their bidding in a war against the most effective smoking cessation method on record to date?
Nicotine-free vapes still develop the oral habit in children and has been shown to be an easy entry into other vapes. Also propalene glycol really isn’t great for your lungs, and constantly sucking on a vape that uses it does negatively effect your breathing.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20191018/Vaping-propylene-glycol-and-vegetable-glycerine-may-lead-to-lung-inflammation.aspx
Oh God the gateway drug argument can fuck right off.