The Riverton City Council is planning to update its municipal code to match new federal and state laws prohibiting tobacco use and vaping for people under age 21.
The council also wants to find local strategies to help curb underage use of unregulated substances like Delta-8 THC.
‘Heartbreaking’
Educators from Riverton Middle School approached the council during a work session this month to discuss the vaping issue, which they say is impacting local children as early as first grade.
By the time those students enter middle school, they may already be addicted to vaping products, RMS principal Aziz Waheed said, calling the situation “heartbreaking.”
“This problem is near and dear to us,” he said. “We need your help.”
Student resource officer Tyler Larsen showed the council a collection of tobacco vaping products that have been confiscated at RMS, pointing out that many of them are flavored to taste like bubble gum, cotton candy, or fruit.
“The history of tobacco is kind of repeating itself,” Larsen said. “(They’re) advertising to young kids.”
Vaping products are easier than cigarettes and chewing tobacco to use undetected, however, Larsen said, and as a result, “we have kids puffing on these all day.”
If the student is vaping tobacco, that means they are “potentially smoking a pack of cigarettes throughout the whole day … at the age of third grade,” he said.
“Then you bring in the marijuana aspect of it with Delta-8,” Larsen continued. “The kids we interact with that are using (Delta-8) are extremely intoxicated on the substance.”
Consequences
RMS has installed vapor sensors at school, Waheed said, and administrators conduct regular “sweeps” to identify students with vape products in the buidling.
But when students are caught vaping, Waheed said the consequences for their actions – ranging from court fines to school suspensions and extra homework assignments – don’t help them “kick the addiction.”
School counselors do offer resources to students in need of addiction support, RMS assistant principal Tyler Jordan noted, and “we’ve had some success with that” – but he also added that addiction services are “a little bit outside (our) realm” as educators.
Instead, Waheed said, “we’re trying to educate, trying to tell the stories, trying to curb the behaviors.”
“We want to get on the front side of shutting it down,” he said.
State law
During the work session, council members discussed the possibility of including Delta-8 THC and other unregulated substances in the local ordinance banning tobacco and vaping products for people under age 21, but city staff said it would “probably” be best to leave those decisions to state lawmakers due to concerns regarding pre-emption and interstate commerce.
“I would advise … that we work, rather, through our state representatives, if you have desires on voicing any type of control when it comes to Delta-8 (or) kratom or other products,” city administrator Kyle Butterfield said.
He pointed out that multiple local lawmakers – including Wyoming Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander; Wyoming Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton; and Wyoming Sen. Ed Cooper, R-Ten Sleep – are members of the Joint Judiciary Committee, which is working on the Delta-8 issue this year.
“If you would like, you can provide comment and testimony during those (committee) meetings to potentially direct any type of legislation that could come forward in the next session,” Butterfield said. “That’s one way that you may be able to put Riverton’s influence into the law, rather than yourselves creating some type of ordinance.”
‘Our responsibility’
But several council members said they would like to pursue local solutions to the problem as well.
“I think that it’s our responsibility to legislate or to enact rules that help Riverton,” Councilmember Kyle Larson said. “Let’s not wait for the great Cheyenne to help us.”
Councilmembers Lindsey Cox and Kristy Salisbury both agreed with Larson.
“We need to take a strong stance for our kids,” Salisbury said. “We need to have something more of a deterrent, so they don’t start in the first place – (like) automatic community service. … There has to be some sort of solutions where people don’t want to do it because they don’t want the consequences.”
The council decided to take up the conversation again during a future meeting.
For more information call the City of Riverton at 856-2227.