Students Referred to Authorities for Vaping in Last Five Years

Ms Joan Pereira asked the Minister for Education how many students have been referred to the Health Sciences Authority for vaping in the last five years.

Mr Speaker, the number of students from schools and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) referred to the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) for vaping offences was less than 50 before 2020. Our schools and IHLs have stepped up checks in recent years and the number of students referred to HSA increased to about 800 in 2022. Still, it is likely there is under-detection.

The Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health (MOH), HSA and Health Promotion Board (HPB) are concerned about the vaping situation not just among students, but in the wider community.

MOE is working with MOH, HSA and HPB to strengthen detection, enforcement and education. Besides enforcement checks, our schools and IHLs have stepped up preventive education to convey the harmful effects of vaping on one's health. We seek the cooperation of families and the wider community to reinforce these messages strongly to stem this worrying trend.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Second Minister for the reply. I have one supplementary question.

Can I ask if there are plans to allocate more resources, be it technology, teaching tools or maybe even manpower, to assist our schools in addressing the issue of vaping among our youths?

I thank the Member for the supplementary question. Certainly, where necessary, we will allocate the necessary resources to improve our effort at reaching out to the students.

Let me just very quickly articulate what we have been doing at our schools. We imbue the messages against smoking and vaping in our curriculum. For example, in Physical Education at the upper primary, students are taught that all tobacco products are harmful and can affect their health and fitness. They are also taught about the harmful substances when offered. In the Science curriculum in education, we also explain to the students the harmful effects of substances found in products as well as the consequences on individuals, families and society are discussed at the lower secondary level.

In our Character and Citizenship Education (CCE), the students also learn about recognising impulsive and addictive behaviours that harm one's mental health, physical well-being and how to manage the concept of self-esteem as well as management of negative peer influence.

So, these are efforts that are being done today.

On the question of personnel, we recognise that personnel in schools are role models and they are also mentors and guides to our students. So, we equip them with the necessary skillsets to be able to support our students. As form teachers, they educate students on self-control and how to manage addictive behaviour. So, we are doing at this point in time what we can to reach out to the students. They know that vaping, for example, is an illegal activity. They know the harmful effects of it not just on their body but the fact that they are doing illegal activities. If they are involved, we engage parents, in the first instance, to try to help. But we will do more where necessary to increase our effort at addressing this trend.