As the new school year gets into full swing, educators are confronting an addiction landscape that looks very different from the one schools faced even a few years ago.
Illegal flavored disposable e-cigarettes with high levels of nicotine dominate the market. Discrete oral nicotine pouches that are difficult to detect are rapidly growing in popularity. At the same time, cigarettes are remerging across social media, entertainment, fashion, and celebrity imagery, threatening to make smoking seem glamorous or socially acceptable to a new generation. Young people are also navigating cannabis use, which can overlap with tobacco and nicotine use and add another layer of complexity to addiction.
Teachers are seeing the consequences firsthand. In a Truth Initiative report, one educator described student nicotine use as “an everyday issue across all grades.”
While youth e-cigarette use has declined to its lowest level in nearly a decade, 1.44 million middle and high school students still report currently using e-cigarettes. Many young people are also increasingly using more than one nicotine product, including e-cigarettes, pouches, and cigarettes, which can deepen dependence and make quitting more difficult.
Schools need prevention resources that reflect this changing reality.
That is why Truth Initiative recently updated Vaping: Know the truth, its free national nicotine-prevention curriculum for middle and high school students. The refreshed digital curriculum includes new lessons, videos, and interactive content addressing e-cigarettes, oral nicotine pouches, cigarettes, and changing patterns of use. It also builds on cannabis lessons introduced to the curriculum in 2024, helping students understand cannabis-related risks and how cannabis and nicotine use can intersect.
Available to schools through Everfi®, the self-guided digital course uses a youth-centered, peer-to-peer voice to help students understand nicotine addiction, recognize industry marketing tactics, learn about health risks, and practice refusal skills for situations they may encounter in real life.
Since Vaping: Know the truth first launched in 2020, more than 1.8 million students have been active on the course. Research found that students who completed it experienced a 15% average increase in their knowledge of e-cigarettes and nicotine addiction.
But prevention is only part of what schools need.
When a student is caught using nicotine, responses too often begin and end with punishment. Schools need rules, and consequences may be appropriate, but addiction is not solved through discipline alone. Students need support.
EX Program by Truth Initiative is a free, evidence-based digital quit program, developed in collaboration with Mayo Clinic, that provides personalized quit plans, interactive text messages, and an online community. It supports people in quitting e-cigarettes, cigarettes, and oral nicotine pouches, and students can access it independently and confidentially. Research also shows that EX Program can help young people who use nicotine quit both nicotine and cannabis, highlighting the value of support that recognizes how these behaviors can overlap. Educators who are looking to help students who are using nicotine can direct them to EX Program as a resource for help.
Students who use nicotine may be coping with cravings and withdrawal, which can increase feelings of stress and anxiety. A purely punitive response can miss an important opportunity to address the addiction driving the student’s behavior. It may also make students less likely to ask an adult for help.
Teachers, counselors, coaches, and other school faculty may be the first person a student trusts enough to acknowledge that they’re struggling with nicotine. That makes educators an important bridge to evidence-based quitting resources.
Prevention remains critical. But for students who are already addicted to nicotine, quitting support must be just as visible and accessible. By combining knowledge and education with a compassionate path to help, schools can give students the skills and support they need to protect themselves from addiction — and to break free from it.
Educators can share EX Program with their students by directing them to text NICBREAK to 88709. Added in-school resources are available for educators at: truthinitiative.org/educators
To learn more about the refreshed Vaping: Know the truth curriculum and access the course visit truthinitiative.org/vaping-curriculum.