Vape Detectors: The Nanny State Gone Wild

If you’ve been following the news, you must be aware that vaping is the biggest threat to our youth in recent years. According to hundreds of news stories — based on actual studies by real scientists! — vaping is virtually certain to addict kids to nicotine, and probably turn them into cloud-blowing, fedora-wearing hipsters.

Luckily, caring school administrators now have an innovative new surveillance tool to find vape offenders early, so they can be safely shipped to re-education camps before they pollute the schools with their degenerate fake smoking.

“The key to improving life safety and security in schools is through automated situational awareness. Principals and teachers must receive real-time information about a possible threat/situations, so they can initiate the appropriate response plan.”

So says the promotional material on the website of a company called Digital Fly. The New York outfit makes a “suite of software tools and services to help schools with bullying, cyber-bullying, suicide, self-harm, violence and other potential dangers.” Like vaping.

​
“The Fly Paper Engine communicates with the various Fly Sensors to provide life safety, security and environmental notifications,” the site says. “Ensure the right information reaches the person via the right Fly Sensor so a potential situation can be addressed the right way.
​
“With the Fly Sense sensor array you can keep a close eye on what matters most to you and be able to react in time to prevent disaster. Receive alerts directly to your smart phone so you are aware of when a Fly Sensor detects a threat.”

The “Fly Sense sensor” is the one that detects vape junkies exhaling in the bathroom. It also detects bullying. Perhaps even by the same student.

“If someone is inside the bathroom and they vape, it will contaminate the air, our sensor will pick it up and it will alert somebody in real time, ‘Hey, there’s a problem here, your air is contaminated, somebody could be vaping, somebody could be smoking, send somebody to check it out,'” Digital Fly’s Billy Schweigert told Fox News.

Schweigert explained that the Fly Sense device detects gas and moisture in the air. When the sensor reading increases suddenly, it could mean…a vaper! Fly Sense then sends a notification to a cell phone to someone on the beleaguered staff.

It also detects peaks in sound levels, which Schweigert says may indicate bullying in progress. Apparently bullies nowadays aren’t quiet and creepy like they were in my day. But they will be once they read about Fly Sense!

You know the world is upside down when people are inventing high tech gadgets to solve problems that don’t exist — and officials like school boards are lining up to be fleeced. We know that the vast majority of vaping high school kids are doing it as an alternative to smoking. And until people understand that harm reduction for smokers is a good thing, count on seeing more “innovation” like this.