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As city officials rehash the tobacco retail license question, Del Norte High School’s principal says because vaping continues to be a problem, she has allowed drug-sniffing dogs from Pelican Bay State Prison on campus.

Principal Alison Eckart said her former students, correctional officers Danny Fry and Daniel Forkner, offered to bring their canine partners on campus back in September. It’s a form of training for the dogs, she said, and it’s also outreach within the community. The dogs have visited Del Norte High about twice a month since October.

“They’re quite effective,” Eckart told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Friday. “What happens in that situation is they go to the classroom, I have the kids leave and leave all of their things at their desk. When the classroom is empty it’s just the CO [correctional officer] and the dog and they roam the room and whatever the dogs mark on, I get to go search.”

Eckart said the dogs have uncovered marijuana, marijuana cartridges, tobacco and, on a couple of occasions, unopened bottles of alcohol. The dogs have also found vape devices every time they visit. They’ll be on campus for about two hours typically. and search roughly six classrooms. She’s the only person who knows when the dogs will come.

While Crescent City Councilors last week argued over whether regulating tobacco sales within city limits constituted government overreach, Eckart was holding an “open mic night” of sorts for parents. There was no agenda, but youth vaping — the issue that got the ball rolling on a potential tobacco retail license last year — continues to concern parents, she said.

At this point, Eckart estimates that there are roughly 30 kids who regularly vape on campus. But that’s anecdotal. Catching them continues to be hard because there’s no smell, no cigarette butts and the vapor dissipates.

“They’re still primarily doing it in the bathrooms I believe,” Eckart said, adding that she’s instituted a rule that only allows one person in a bathroom stall as a result. “That’s where there are no cameras.”

Del Norte High has also deployed vape detectors on a trial basis, Eckart said.

“They go off quite a bit — the smallest amount of tobacco or nicotine, they can pick up on — and we’re trying to watch the cameras and correlate times on who comes out of the bathroom and reach out to the kid,” she said.

Though the California Education Code states a student must be suspended if they’re caught with a controlled substance, Eckart said she and other school officials want to avoid suspension if possible.
Her first step when confronting the student is finding out whether they think there is a problem they need to get help for. Sometimes Eckart finds that vaping is acceptable at a student’s home. Other times, the student is caving to peer and social pressure to vape, Eckart said.

In addition to calling parents, Eckart said she often recommends drug counseling. Another remedy is having students sit through a vaping prevention program like CATCH My Breath.

“We’re really trying to come up with a process that makes sense and keeps kids in school,” she said.

Though parents are still concerned about vaping, not everyone has welcomed the dogs’ presence, Eckart said. Some kids have left school as a result of being searched, she said.

“Do I think it has curbed vaping? I’d like to believe it has,” she said, “But again, I’m looking at the vape (detections) for today. I have 13 alerts in one stall and five alerts in another stall. That’s 18 alerts.”

At the Crescent City Council’s March 20 meeting, Crystal Yang, health education coordinator for the county’s Tobacco Use Prevention Program, cited the 2021 California Healthy Kids Survey, which stated that one out of every five Del Norte High School juniors vape.

One out of every 10 seventh graders vape as well, according to the survey, and 60 percent of high school students at Sunset and Castle Rock also vape.

Yang noted that last year’s efforts to get the city and county to approve a tobacco retail license ordinance was largely student-driven. Second-hand vapor is just as dangerous, she said.

“These students also told us that when they went to the fair — the county fair, where several community members go every year — they saw lots of teenagers standing in line for rides vaping as well,” Yang told City Councilors. “These are their own personal experiences.”

Crescent City has double the statewide rate of tobacco retailers per capita, Yang said. There are about four retailers for every 2,500 residents in Crescent City compared to two for every 2,500 residents statewide.

At a March 27, 2022, meeting, students argued that vape products with flavors such as cotton candy and strawberry are what get their peers hooked. But while California voters upheld a flavor ban in the form of Proposition 31 during the November election, Eckart said a local ordinance is still necessary.

“If we make it inconvenient for people in general and uncomfortable, that’s how you can change culture,” she said.

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