Concerns about vaping in schools and a dearth of information on how many students use e-cigarettes were raised in the Scottish Parliament today.
Education secretary Jenny Gilruth said that the imminent publication of a report on a long-running pupil behaviour survey - the first of its kind since 2017 - will help schools deal better with issues around vaping.
Conservative MSP Maurice Golden quizzed Ms Gilruth this afternoon about government action to reduce vaping in schools. He said that recent enquiries by his party had found that at least 22 out of 32 Scottish local authorities were unable to provide information on how many vapes were being confiscated from students.
Ms Gilruth responded that while the most recent government data showed that “the vast majority of teenagers do not vape regularly”, ministers were nevertheless “concerned about the proportion of young people who have tried vaping”.
She said she favoured a “holistic approach to tackling vaping in schools”, and pointed to work with Education Scotland and the public and voluntary sectors to “support work on substance-use education”.
Tackling vaping in schools
Ms Gilruth also pointed to the publication next month of the next full report of the Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools.
More work on vaping and other substance misuse will be informed by this research, the last full edition of which was published in 2017, before the explosion in vaping.
The new report will focus particularly on how pupils’ behaviour has changed since the pandemic, Ms Gilruth said.
Labour MSP Carol Mochan said that about one in 10 people who vape are under the age of 16, which she argued was reflected in the “colourful packaging, cheap price and easy accessibility of vaping products”.
For vaping in schools to be “eradicated”, Ms Mochan suggested it was crucial to tackle the sale of e-cigarettes in shops near schools.
Ms Gilruth replied that enforcement of legislation around vaping was the responsibility of local authorities, and that the government had raised its concerns in a 2022 letter to “all retailers selling nicotine vaping products”.
She said that anyone concerned about shops providing vapes to under-age students should contact trading standards.
However, Ms Gilruth added that there was a “challenge” around different approaches and legislation across the UK, saying that “we’ve been keen to work...to have a four-nations approach to tackling this issue more broadly”.
