When writing about marijuana use in high schools nationwide, Wall Street Journal reporter Andrea Petersen focused on Liberty High School in Brentwood. 

Liberty students don’t know if they should take it as a compliment or not.

The reporter’s visit to Liberty on Dec. 4, 2025, which included interviews with staff and students alike, focused on Liberty’s restroom vape detectors, a modern, technological solution the school has implemented to address the widespread problem of students vaping on campus.

“In 2023, Liberty installed the sensors, 11 in all, paired with cameras aimed at the bathroom entrances,” Petersen wrote about the school’s restroom vape detectors. “If a campus supervisor can’t respond to an alert at the time a sensor goes off, school staff can watch video to see who came and went during the time when the vape index was high.”

The sensors detect vapor in the restrooms, whether it’s from nicotine or THC (the psychoactive component of marijuana), and send an alert to school officials. They’re stationed on the walls of each bathroom, at least 10 feet off the ground away from potential tamperers. They may look inconspicuous at first, just a white box with rounded edges attached to an already white wall, but the holes in the bottom of the sensors absorb vapors in the room, causing an alert. 

The sensors come with an expensive price tag at $1,000 apiece, with an additional $249 annual licensing fee. But as vaping marijuana and nicotine has increasingly become more common among teens, its necessity in turn becomes more evident.

“Peer pressure is at its highest during this stage in their life, so they’re easily swayed even if they weren’t interested at first,” said Valeria Macias, a health teacher at Liberty High School. “It has become a little bit mainstream, and I think that’s also why they don’t think it’s a big deal.” 

On the bright side, the detectors seem to be working as marijuana use has become less prevalent in restrooms. In years past, it was common for students to walk into the restrooms only to find themselves in a cloud of smoke. As 12th grader  Kamiyah Blunt described it in Petersen’s article, it was like “a party in the bathroom.” 

Improvements on this front have been noticeable in the campus culture, with more people being comfortable enough to go to the restroom and actually use them for their intended purpose.

“Freshman year, it was like every time I would have to go to the bathroom,” 11th grader Madison Thomas said of encountering vaping. “Now I rarely see it.”

On the other hand, while use of the school’s sensors has certainly seen success, such as officials catching students vaping in the restroom, Liberty Principal Efa Huckaby told Peterson in her article that it’s a “cat and mouse” game trying to do anything to prevent marijuana use on campus.

Many teens agree that despite these efforts, marijuana use remains high on campus.

“I’ll walk in [the bathroom] and it’ll smell like weed and vape, and then I’ll walk out and smell like it, and it’s so disgusting,” said 11th grader Lulu Quesada.

At Liberty High, it’s common to know someone who vapes. Students have seemingly become more open about their drug-use habits, including marijuana. Some students can be seen vaping marijuana on campus, a very noticeable and bold action in the face of the administration’s crackdown.

“Some guy was literally dealing in the hallway,” said 11th grader Janiya Brown. “They were being very secretive. The guy was handing him something, and the other guy was handing him cash. Not to assume, but they probably were dealing in the middle of the hallways.”

From inside restroom stalls to a student’s THC vape pen hidden in a sleeve while in a distracted teacher’s classroom, marijuana use can still be found around campus. Even in the restrooms, it can seem like many incidents go undetected. This schoolwide phenomena commonly affects not only the users of marijuana, but non-using students as well.

“Since [vape users] are hiding in the bathrooms and they never get out, they mostly stay there for the whole class period, so the bathrooms are never available because they’re just sitting in there doing whatever they’re doing,” Brown said.

Many factors contribute to the common usage of marijuana among teens, with Petersen particularly highlighting normalization and self-medication as key factors. With the legalization of marijuana in California, the perception among many teens has become one of a natural treatment for the daily struggles they may face.

“It’s probably more accessible than any other drug out there right now,” Macias said. “I think it also comes back to how, in the state of California, there’s not as much regulation around it.”

With marijuana being viewed as a stress reliever, it’s no wonder that teens have become drawn to it. According to a 2014 study by the American Psychological Association (APA), teens on average reported their stress levels at 5.8 on a 10-point scale, above the believed healthy level of 3.9. The average reported stress level of adults is 5.1, according to the APA study.

With the pressures of keeping up with schoolwork, preparing for college, participating in extracurricular activities, and maintaining a social life, stress has become a part of daily life for many teens. Without professional mental healthcare, some seek vaping as a treatment. 

But by doing this, many teens, whether knowingly or unknowingly, are ignoring the negative effects of marijuana use.

“Teens don’t grasp that their brains are still under development, their bodies are still under development, and because they don’t see any immediate effects, they think that it’s not a big deal. Every now and then is fine or safe, and it’s not until obviously later on that a lot of issues stem back to drug use,” Macias said. “I don’t think they even know that it doesn’t just affect their brain, it can affect their fertility later on.”

Aside from the long-term effects, vaping can harm a student’s performance in school, with Macias pointing to marijuana as a cause of the growing lack of academic effort found among teens, inevitably adding to the stress teens already face.

“Some people think it relieves stress,” Brown said. “Some people get really stressed out with school, and so they turn to vaping, thinking it will help them when it really just makes it worse.”

The APA recommends teens spend more time sleeping, exercising, and talking through their struggles as ways to cope with growing stress. Simple activities like these could do more to reduce stress than many might expect.

“Whether it’s therapy or specific strategies that anyone can practice on a daily basis, I think even those small ways are underestimated,” Macias said. “And just having motivation in life. Having a purpose. When people have a goal, they’re less likely to be pulled off that track to get there.”

But with many high school students having a packed schedule full of challenging classes, extracurricular activities, and work, many are left unable to properly care for themselves without knowledge of healthy coping habits, leading them to turn to marijuana.

Peterson’s article on Liberty High School efforts, which was also summarized on YouTube, serve as a microcosm of a nationwide problem. Whether or not Liberty’s system of vape detectors will become standard across the United States is yet to be seen. But it is certain that addressing the use of marijuana among teens is a problem that detectors can’t solve alone.