Roughly 10 years ago, the Juul craze started to take over the teenage world, hitting Jackson-Reed (then Wilson) High School hard. Since then, vape products have evolved, as has usage at JR and for all teenagers, with more than 2.5 million teenagers across the country estimated to be using vape products in 2025.
Vape devices, or e-cigarettes, work by vaporizing a liquid that the user can then inhale. Vape products typically do not contain tobacco, but most do contain nicotine, a highly addictive chemical extracted from tobacco. In DC, you must be 21 to legally purchase e-cigarettes, and the sale of all flavored e-cigarettes is prohibited.
JR has seen many cases of students using vapes over the years, including a recent incident involving The Beacon’s office, in which students were found with an e-cigarette, which caused The Beacon to be forced to relocate. This is representative of a larger trend within the JR student body: widespread nicotine use.
Health Teacher Rebecca Bradshaw-Smith has noticed that in class, “people don’t talk about cigarettes as much as they used to,” but vapes, on the other hand, “all day long.” According to Bradshaw-Smith, vapes are much more accessible and easy to use, in part because “they’re cute and discrete.”
One anonymous junior emphasized how common nicotine usage is with JR students, saying, “the majority of my friends consume nicotine daily.” An anonymous senior reports that he consumes nicotine 7-8 times a day. Another anonymous senior said that she has at least “15 friends who use nicotine on a regular basis.”
For the majority of students surveyed, their nicotine usage started in high school, at ages 15 or 16 years old. However, an anonymous junior said “I started consuming nicotine regularly when I was 14,” and noted many peers have also been vaping on a daily basis since middle school.
While nicotine usage is daily or weekly for some, many students’ nicotine use is limited to social settings. One anonymous senior noted the social aspect, saying, “I like how easy it is to bond with people over it, like at a party you can just ask for a cig and then boom, great convo.” Another anonymous senior echoed this sentiment, saying that she knows “a lot of people who just [consume nicotine] at parties.”
However, despite a large portion of JR students regularly consuming nicotine, most say this doesn’t happen in the building very often. The past few years, the administration has been ramping up their fight against nicotine in school. An anonymous junior – who had personally faced disciplinary action because of vaping – said that they have noticed how “security has amped up over the past few years.” Director of Culture Stephon Seraile said that the school evaluates each situation on a case-by-case basis and punishments are dependent on the student’s situation.
Even though nicotine takes on a different form in vapes and zyns, the detrimental impacts remain. Vaping can impact your lungs “to the point where your lungs are supposed to look like a sponge, they can start looking like a carbon ball,” said Bradshaw-Smith, and it keeps your heart from pumping the way it should be. Overall, Bradshaw-Smith pointed out that, “it ages you, from the inside and out.” •
