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New Mexico School Administrators Can’t Tell the Difference Between Marijuana and Nicotine Vaporizers
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Officials at La Cueva High School are now testing every vaporizer they confiscate to see if kids are vaping pina colada hookah juice or super silver haze.
Published on October 14, 2017

Smoking in the boy’s room is getting a little harder at Albuquerque, New Mexico’s La Cueva High School, where administrators are taking drastic measures to make sure students aren’t getting high with every millennial’s favorite oral fixation, vaporizers.

According to local news station KRQE, La Cuerva school officials are not happy with persistent vaporizer use on campus, and once administrators found out that the same space age smoking devices can be used for both nicotine e-juice and cannabis concentrates, they’ve turned to science to discourage the underage cloud blowers.

Using instant marijuana detection tests, administrators now open any confiscated vape and test the contents for cannabis.

“They’re test tubes in plastic and you pour the oil from the e-cig inside and you shake it up. If it turns a certain color, you know it’s positive.” La Cueva High School Principal Dana Lee said.

“A few years ago our crossroads councilor presented a Powerpoint that actually described how e-cigarettes were being used for marijuana. In place of nicotine in an e-cig, they use marijuana oil.” Lee added. “Since they were really publically accepted out there in the world, the kids started bringing them in here like they were socially accepted as well, and we were suspicious of their use.”

Lee told KRQE that they have had to use the test kits, but she wouldn’t reveal if any vapes came back positive for marijuana.

Carrying on a long tradition of American public school administrators making up for cultural ignorance with prison-style rule changes, all indications say have lead us to assume that La Cueva officials have still not learned the difference between a large bodied, customizable nicotine vapes and small battery, disposable cartridge topped cannabis vaporizers.

If a student is caught does get caught with weed in their e-juice chamber they are subject to a three day suspension, a 45 day suspension from any extracurricular activities and an appointment with the Albuquerque police department.

For some parents of La Cueva students, the new vape testing rule is a little too invasive.

“I would not like for them to just be grabbing things from students at school,” La Cueva parent Michelle Hamrick told KRQE. “However, as a concerned parent, I would be happy if they took it and contacted me to let me know that my child has this device at school and they want to test it. I would like to be part of it because I think that if parents support it, it will work 100 percent.”

Still, teens will be teens, and if you tell them not to do something, chances are they’ll find a way around your rules. Whether that means eating edibles in class instead of vaping at lunch or ignoring the new decree altogether, we’re guessing Albuquerque’s teens will still find time to experiment with weed and nicotine, no matter how many viscous liquids the principal tests.

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Zach Harris
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Zach Harris is a writer based in Philadelphia whose work has appeared on Noisey, First We Feast, and Jenkem Magazine. You can find him on Twitter @10000youtubes complaining about NBA referees.
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