After vapes made Kentucky students sick, nearby district tries to stop sales to minors.

A school district in southeastern Kentucky has asked businesses to guard against selling vape pens to minors after students in a nearby county got sick from using vape pens that may have contained an illegal drug.

Officials from the Harlan County school district distributed letters Monday to businesses across the county urging them to move vaping products behind the counter and to try to make sure employees don’t sell to minors.

The letter said that while most businesses that sell vape products follow the law, school officials had heard from an “alarming number of underage students” that they had bought such products locally, illegally.

“Please help us avoid a tragedy,” the letter said.

The school district reached out to businesses and parents in the wake of incidents in Knox County in which students suffered concerning symptoms after using vape pens.

The Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or AHIDTA, said that between Feb. 10 and Feb. 16, eight school-aged children from Knox County experienced drug overdose symptoms as a result of vape pen use.

The symptoms included shortness of breath, increased heart rate and confusion, AHIDTA said in a bulletin.

Four students went to the hospital for treatment and four were treated by a school nurse, according to AHIDTA.

Frank Shelton, spokesman for the school district, said the district had only four incidents, not eight.

After three students at Lynn Camp Middle/High School had adverse symptoms on Feb. 15, Knox County Sheriff Mike Smith said in a news release that the vape pens they used were believed to have contained THC, the ingredient in marijuana.

AHIDTA said in its bulletin two vape pens involved in the incidents may have been laced with fentanyl.

That is a painkiller far more powerful than heroin that has been responsible for a significant increase in overdose deaths in Kentucky and across the U.S.

Police sent all the vape pens to the Kentucky State Police lab to be tested.

If tests confirm any of the vape pens in Knox County were laced with fentanyl, it would be the first time that has been documented in Kentucky, and would be among only a few cases nationwide, according to the AHIDTA bulletin.

In a letter to parents after several of the incidents, Knox County school officials said vaping can be risky for young people because they may not know whether illegal, or potentially fatal, substances have been added to the device.

In Harlan County, school officials told businesses that the use of vaping products by young people is a growing problem.

“When speaking to students anonymously, many tell us that use is rampant and they all know friends who are addicted to this practice,” the letter said.

It was signed by Superintendent Brent D. Roark; Gary Farmer, chairman of the school board; and Matt Cope and Jim T. Whitaker, school safety officials.

Electronic cigarettes usually contain nicotine, which is addictive, according to the American Lung Association.

Cope, chief of police for the Harlan County school system, said there have been cases of kids in the district getting sick from using vaping products.

“I think kids and parents alike, they don’t realize the danger,” Cope said.

Cope said he was aware of 20 businesses in Harlan County that sell vape pens. He and Whitaker, safe schools director, visited all those businesses Monday to deliver the request to guard against sales to minors.

The district also will send letters to all parents of students in 5th grade and up on Tuesday, urging them to talk to their kids about the dangers of vaping, and has asked teachers to speak to those students as well, Cope said.

Vaping has been a growing concern among school officials in Kentucky.

The board of the Corbin Independent school system said in an open letter in November that it had had cases of students becoming sick after using vaping product, according to the News Journal.

The letter said that during a talk by an expert in the subject, more than half the middle school students in the audience raised their hands when asked if they knew someone their age who vaped regularly and couldn’t stop.

After Kentucky State Police used dogs to do a surprise search for illegal substances at Edmonson County High School last month, the principal, Jonathan Williams, said local officials were finding that illegal substances were being sold in vaping products.

“We’re trying to keep this out of our schools,” he said, according to the Edmonson Voice.

Earlier this month, the sheriff in Lyon County said a 14-year-old girl was facing charges after she was found with a vape device that contained THC, the chemical in marijuana.

The case arose after school officials told police about getting a report that students were vaping on a bus, according to WPKY.

The number of high school and middle school students reporting frequent use of vaping products has increased in Kentucky, according to survey results available from the Kentucky Department of Education.

The number of middle-school students reporting frequent use — defined as 20 days out of the prior 30 — went up from 1.4% in 2015 to 2.9% in 2021, and the number who said they had ever vaped rose from 21.8% to 24.1 % in the same period, according to the survey.

Among high-school students, the number reporting frequent use rose from 3.2% in 2015 to 8.1% in 2021, and the percentage who said they’d ever used a vaping product increased from 41.7 to 45.1, according to the survey.

Overall, 26.1% of Kentucky high school students use electronic cigarettes compared to 14.1% nationally, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.