The Truth About Vapes: What’s Inside, What We Know, and What Comes Next with Forensic Toxicologist Dr. Michelle Peace

What’s really inside a vape, why are so many young people addicted, and what can we do about it?

The CDC reports vapes/e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among middle and high school students in the United States. 

Communities across the country are searching for answers about the risks these products pose and need to be rooted in facts, not fear.

This episode explores the science behind the youth epidemic, the evolution of vaping technology, and the urgent need for research that keeps pace with what’s actually happening when kids use them. We hear how data is being used not only to shape smarter policy, but to equip young people with the clarity they need to make healthier, more informed choices, without judgment or shame.

Because the more we understand, the better we can show up for the youth that depend on us most.

Early bird pricing for the Champions for Youth Summit ends January 9! Lock in your discounted ticket now and save your seat for three days of powerful learning, connection, and inspiration at championsforyouthsummit.org.

Follow Champions for Youth on social to stay connected between episodes and explore resources shared by youth-serving leaders nationwide.

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Have feedback or a topic you’d like us to cover? Submit your ideas at vfhy.org/podcast — we’d love to hear from you.

Transcript

C.J. Stermer (00:30)
What's actually in a vape, and why are so many kids addicted to them? It's a question more more young people, parents and educators are asking as vape usage continues to rise, and so do the risks. Today I'm talking with Dr. Michelle Peace, a forensic toxicologist and professor at VCU, whose research has been at the forefront of uncovering what's inside these devices, how the technology has evolved, and why the vaping epidemic is so much bigger than we think. We talk about how the science points to an urgent need for better data, not just to shape policy, but to get clear, evidence-based information into communities so kids can make healthier choices without shame, stigma, or the confusion. Because using science to tell the truth is the first step to understanding what's going on and how we can change it. Let's get into it.

C.J. Stermer (01:34)
Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today.

Michelle Peace (01:36)
I'm excited to be here with you have the opportunity to talk about what's coming out of my research lab.

I am a professor in the Department of Forensic Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. I am a forensic toxicologist I used to be a practitioner, but I decided to return to university that I could mentor young people and start a research

So one of the things thought a lot about when returning to academia we have to figure out how better stories. So

by the story that empowers somebody to make a decision about that information. And so one of the things I do with myself and also I train my research team is how do we talk about really hard science in a way that empowers a non-scientist or

a community stakeholder or a parent or a they can make good decisions about or we spend a lot of time working on that.

C.J. Stermer (02:42)
Michelle, you are a longtime researcher at VCU. You've done a lot of looking into vapes and e-cigarettes, kind of curious, what motivated you to start looking into vapes so early on, especially considering that people weren't really paying attention to these things

Michelle Peace (02:58)
appreciate that question because scientist we can't work in silos. I had a student who in about 2011, 2012 had been studying abroad comes back to VCU

just says, Hey doc, you really need to look at these things called vapes. I was like, I don't know what those are. And, know, and so you have to think about they're so common in our culture today that at some point,

We didn't culturally understand what these things were. And so in about 2011, 2012, that's where we were. told her, I was like, I don't know why I would be interested in how somebody consumes nicotine, which is a legal drug. Why? I'm a forensic toxicologist. I don't know why I should care about I got to thinking about it

it dawned on me that if people were able to manipulate the device or open up the device, that they were going to be able to put other drugs in it besides nicotine. don't know how e-cigarettes work. We don't know if it's going to facilitate

overdoses. We don't know that it's going to facilitate addiction. And, know, I just felt like that was a really slippery slope. And so we pitched an idea to the National Institute of we really needed to study the impact of e-cigarettes on drug

C.J. Stermer (04:26)
That's a really unique

And it's interesting how you were really able to connect those dots outside of this silo to create this really simple hypothesis on what we think is really happening.

Michelle Peace (04:38)
Yeah, we have to figure out how to be predictive in a lot of ways. And the only ways that as communities we're never gonna be able to keep up with, but it's only through working with unusual stakeholders or parts of the community that you're not used to working people hold different

data points or pieces of information that can make what you're doing or what I'm doing more powerful or more meaningful, ⁓ or somebody else has already thought about a solution to something. reaching out to your community and listening to the community, I think helps us be better

C.J. Stermer (05:19)
That's such a great point. We can accomplish so much more if we work with others that think differently than us. We have to get out of our silos, right? there are so many people with similar goals. So starting to see these babes show up in the United States and you have this aha

and really became one of the early adopters of this research, you know, to say, what are these vape things? What exactly was it that you were finding?

Michelle Peace (05:41)
So vapes came into the United States probably So they had made their way through

Asia, in Europe, in Australia, before they really came to the United States. So they were introduced through a tobacco expo in about 2006 or 2007, and I think they won an innovation award. and reasonably so because the technology of vapes is actually really cool and very useful

you know, there are research teams that are trying to figure out how do you use the technology to take prescription medication, right? So the technology is really cool. you know, when we're sort of like in the early 2010s,

the vape device, the e-cigarette device is pretty boutiquey. It is with small manufacturers and startup companies and they're able to tell essentially whatever narrative they want about vaping. And so there was a lot of mythology came out in those early days.

really understanding what they were, I asked around to a bunch of my colleagues in crime labs and asked them, are you receiving any e-cigarette vaping devices in as evidence to be

So there was one lab I reached out to.

And I said, any chance at all that the police are submitting these devices for ⁓ analysis? And he goes, yeah, but we don't know what to do with them. You know, we don't know how to open them. We don't know how to analyze the liquid on the inside. So they're not central to the cases. So we've just been collecting them. I was like, OK, we're going to help you open them up. I'm going to tell you how to do it.

So he comes back to me a couple of weeks later and he goes, they had pod in them. And I was like, I knew

C.J. Stermer (07:35)
Wow, that's such innovative thinking, especially, you're just asking a simple question. it seems you saw similar rapid growth that I think we all saw in the vaping industry. This surge in not only their presence, but the different evolution of that vaping technology.

know, and based on this research that you've conducted and the outcomes of that research, how did it get here? How did this happen? So fast.

Michelle Peace (08:01)
If you can get a drug into liquid form and there's a way to do that, then you can get that drug into your vape. And so that's what we saw in the early days. So what we saw then was that the technology changed to facilitate this. So there were

There was a generation of devices that was invented expressly for the purpose of vaping drugs other than so we were really quick once we saw them emerge, we were really quick to publish on

this is sort of the mess of what happens when we have an unregulated industry. Regulations are meant to support public health and public safety. And when you don't have good regulations, then there's going to be gaps in quality assurance, mythology is going to develop.

One of the things that we understood in those early days was

The industry was completely unregulated up until 2016. And the FDA is regulations that they had in place did not include vaping technology. so then they had to spend several years, you know, one, they had to be directed by Congress and President Obama.

to actually change the regulations. So that took time. And then they had to write those regulations and sort of vet those. So that took time. And what's happening there, and while we're still trying to figure out how to regulate these, is that the industry is going to expand. You could be a nine-year-old.

and legally purchase a vape. the states then were individually responsible for banning them to children, putting restrictions in restaurants and public places for vaping,

Right. So it took a while. we take for granted that we are a culture of tinkering. We are a culture of innovation.

so

You know, this is when there's no regulation and this culture of tinkering people wanted to be able to leverage this technology for other things. So that empowered them to figure out how to do

C.J. Stermer (10:14)
When did we really start seeing these vapes pop up in schools? You know, I don't think a lot of us were really paying that much attention and really waking up to what was actually happening in the communities, how this was actually affecting teenagers and people in how was this new technology evolving in schools? Because that must've been so frustrating.

Michelle Peace (10:33)
Yeah, and questions into the lab, which was and getting access, right? And so this really began to drive me towards I've got to figure out

how to get data faster to school So I had a school system reach out, right, because I'm known as the woman who talks about adulterating vapes, and they reached out and said, you hey, we think the kids in the school system, we think they're putting cocaine into their vapes. Like, well, okay, so let's pause and unpack that. Why do you think so what the school didn't,

understand

was that there was a new device in town, right? It was a pod style device that could easily be.

mistaken for other things like ink pens and highlight markers and when I met with the school system and I realized that there's so many of these in the schools, I told them because of these pod style devices can contain more nicotine that these kids were experiencing nicotine toxicity. That's not cocaine.

whatever it is that you're collecting on school grounds, why don't you just send those to me for analysis? I'm a chemist. This is what I do. And so they did. And we were able to start tracking the chemical composition these products.

we just started thinking a lot having access to these and listening to the mythology that is developing around vapes from

you know, they're safe to use or it's just water vapor.

C.J. Stermer (12:15)
Was that just nicotine or were they evolving even more into something else?

Michelle Peace (12:19)
so start presenting this data about nicotine and what's in these vapes. And we saw that, the biggest chemical change was they were putting a synthetic cooling agent in there because there was a ban on menthol.

So they just started using this chemical called WS3 and WS23, which is a synthetic cooling agent that was essentially invented in the 50s to put in things like shaving cream, not just a shaving cream, but other kinds of healthcare products for that cooling sensation. And so now they're putting that into the vapes to be inhaled. So I'm aggravated enough over that and that kids have easy access to them and parents don't know the difference.

teachers don't know the difference. We're talking about, you know, how easy these things are to hide and, you know, kids are becoming addicted to them quite easily.

And so a colleague of mine was presenting the data in one school system and she was like, oh, the teachers are just, they wish it was nicotine now because now all the kids are vaping pot. And I was like, okay, again, why, why do we think that?

we met with some teachers and they all said the same thing that all the kids are smoking pot. And I'm just, I am so enraged, right? Because it's like time got away from us and the industry charged ahead, right?

And one of the things that was happening the very next day was a meeting of Virginia's cannabis control 40. and I wasn't on the docket. And so I just go to make a comment and

I am so angry over now there's a perception that all the kids are vaping pot now. Like how did we get here? And so I was so enraged when I got up to speak to them about what was coming being said in the schools. I'm not kidding. I was crying. I'm just right. That's my, that's my stress response is either to laugh or to cry. And so, right. And so

I just like, know, shame, it's just shame on all of us because, you know, while we're worried about all of these other things, you know, and I had had this narrative of we've got to do something to be more aggressive about protecting children and protecting our schools and protecting our communities. And now it's gotten away from us and look at all of this unregulated cannabis and kids have access to it

We knew this was going to happen. And so ⁓ there was somebody from the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth was in the audience and sort of heard my plea for, we have to do something. I can't be in a silo to be angry about this by myself. And so the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth came forward and funded a pilot project for us

And so one of the things that we feel very strongly about is you can't manage something unless you're measuring it and you can't develop good policy or good education unless you really know what's in your school, what's in your system, what's in your community.

C.J. Stermer (15:26)
Wow, yeah, I love that emotion and I totally agree.

I felt like it just got away from us too,

But what I love is that you charged ahead. know what you said? I gotta speak up. I have to do something

And I like what you said that before we take action, we have to really understand the issue, right? Like we have to get some basic understanding about what is really happening and be able to make data informed decisions so that we can actually create effective change. That it has to be really intentional, right?

Michelle Peace (15:57)
Right.

C.J. Stermer (15:57)
So I'm really curious, how were you able to do that? How were you able to start developing what a solution actually looks

to get this information in schools, how are we getting it there?

Michelle Peace (16:07)
Yeah, so one of the things that we committed to, and a lot of navigation in this. When you decide that you're going to be a response mechanism for somebody to make decisions really close to an event, you've gotta put resources on that. And so one of the things that me and my team felt very strongly about was,

We have to get the devices in, collect all kinds of data about them, from what do they look like, to analyzing them, what's the chemicals. And we try to push out quarterly bulletins. They're not pretty, right? But they're very data-driven. Here's exactly what we found. is what came out of this health district.

These came out of this health And these are all the chemicals that we found. very dry. We don't make any kind of assertions about it. We don't interpret it. We just like, here's all the data. so handful of things unexpected fell out of that. Because we're in such new territory here, we don't know.

how to leverage all of this. Like we're learning as we go. We're having lots of conversations with school systems and parents and PTAs and administrators. And so what we heard from a couple of school systems was that the single most effective tool they had to get the kids in their school to commit to stopping vaping were our bulletins.

It's just data, right? Non-judgmental. get to decide the good and the bad and the ugly, right? When you see formaldehyde on there, people are like, formaldehyde or fingernail polish remover or you see what I'm saying? That people will make a decision. I shouldn't be inhaling that every 10 So that was one outcome.

that we were a little bit surprised about because we kind of went in with no expectations that we were just about pushing data out so that people could know what was going on in their communities. then we had one school system

that responded to us when we're trying to talk about like, what do we need to do with the data? How can we help you more? What kind of education do you need? So one school system came to us and said, hey, our county administrators are funding another substance use treatment and education person for the school system, right? Because A, they see the problem, but also B, now we've got data.

that's demonstrating that it's not just nicotine, it's also these other so those are some really cool outcomes. We funded a couple of, like I call them nano grants, because it was only like $500, $1000 to a couple of schools, where we said we want a student led initiative around getting kids to stop vaping.

And so in one school system, we funded like a yoga program, you know, to help them, And then we had another school system needed some money to help build

C.J. Stermer (19:18)
Fascinating. I think you also bring up something that is worth reiterating. It doesn't have to be elaborate, right? It doesn't have to be overly developed or this big expensive undertaking to develop a just has to be simple, data informed and create this non-judgmental way

so we can empower our kids to make their own informed decisions. have these types of programs been easy for people to replicate in their own communities and school systems?

Michelle Peace (19:43)
first and foremost is we publish in the peer reviewed scientific literature, Because that is the pinnacle of scientific communication, right? It gets vetted, it gets evaluated. Is it legitimate? So there's other, there's peer scientists that are looking at this

Like, hey, is peace off her rocker when she says this? Right? So, right. So that's always the pinnacle, right? Everything we do, we publish in a peer-reviewed scientific literature because we want to demonstrate that vetting of our conclusions. But then after that, we present at all kinds of conferences from nursing, from nursing conferences, health care professionals.

to substance use treatment groups. But then every school district who volunteers to participate. They get these bulletins. We have this internal

folder on a server that all the schools get access to. But, you the real piece that we do struggle with for our dissemination is casting it more broadly, So doing things like this is really critical because we do see other groups spend a lot of energy and a lot of time

and oftentimes a lot of expense trying to stand some kind of program or system up. And we're like, let me send you a folder. Let me send you how to do what worked, here's what didn't work and why, so that somebody else is learning off of our mistakes and out of our conversations.

And so we do think a lot about how do we have a more national conversation around this because sort of like the engine that we have

And so, the secret sauce of our entire program is that I'm a forensic toxicologist who chases the unknown. I have methods that are meant to chase the unknown. I have a team trained in asking questions to chase the And so,

Right? And then we just build the architecture around that core to say, okay, here's how we're going to get devices and we've got to support the schools and we've got to lower the barrier for them to participate. And we also have to eliminate fear. Like a lot of school systems have a lot of concern about participating with us. So we have an IRB so that no school gets named, no administrator gets named. You have no idea how to like put this back on a kid.

but the information that we push out, we hope, is empowering and accessible to somebody who wants to make a policy or practice

C.J. Stermer (22:28)
Right. We really have to build that trust so people know your methods. We're not just making it up to try and solve for

C.J. Stermer (22:35)
You mentioned a lot of this information was focused at a local level, especially in your state. Do you ever see pushback from other states or other people when they're trying to use this information in their own local places around the country?

Michelle Peace (22:48)
Yeah, of the pieces that ⁓ I deal with you know, I've got confidence in the data that we produce. And one of the criticisms, though, that we get when we, one of the criticisms that we,

get sometimes when I'm presenting in front of general audiences is that, well, that's just Virginia. know that just to strike out against a really solid program that has really solid data that's demonstrating what is in schools at the end of the

I think in order for us to empower because it is so easy to dismiss our data. Like if you are in Kansas and you're saying, well, I'm going to take that Virginia data and apply it to my community, you will have people push back, right, to say that's not here in Kansas. We have seen that historically happen for where

If you're not demonstrating it in your community, then people will not want to overlay data from another community onto it. So one of the things that we would love to happen is for communities to reach out to us and say, hey, we have this problem. Hey, we want to collect data. Hey, we might not be able to do it in the scale that you're currently doing it. But if I'm a school system and I've got

a school administrator who's just angry enough over this and needs some data out of their school system, then we can have conversations about one, how do you fund that? And two, how can we help you do that? Because we have the architecture, right? And it can overlay into other communities.

C.J. Stermer (24:33)
Exactly. We want to get this information and we want to get these programs out in other areas, but we need to get through the pushback to help support getting through those barriers is to help take action on the actual solution, which I think a lot of people agree that we need. We talk a lot about empowering others and to ask for help here. And it sounds like that's what you're asking for help. So what can we do? How can we actually help to get this information along?

Michelle Peace (24:57)
one of my asks is,

I think all the time about how do I get other groups, other

agencies, other communities, other schools in other parts of our country to say, ⁓ I might have access to a little pocket of money that, you know, Peace and her team can set up the architecture here and I can get some so that we can make a policy change based on data out of our school or out of our community.

C.J. Stermer (25:28)
Yes, help us help you to help others. We love unique partnerships How do we go about reaching you to provide that do we help empower our community to replicate this structure and the success that you have?

Michelle Peace (25:42)
So I am fortunately pretty easy to find You know just put my name and VCU into the search bar and I'm I'm pretty easy to find that way You can email me directly and we'll have a conversation about what that can actually look like and That you know we

are in several conversations with other states right now in terms of helping them, one, understand what the program is and the kind of data that they'll get from it, but also like, where there's some really clever ways that you can think about how do you fund this so that, you know, so that you can collect enough data to make a point.

I mean it goes. back to the original like one of the very first things we said at the top of our hour, which was you cannot continue to work in a silo. And that silo can be just amongst Or just inside of your school system or just inside of your county. You do have to figure out as a community, how do you reach out to

different stakeholders with different perspectives outside of that education. And that can bring more context to one, problem, but definitely to your solution.

C.J. Stermer (26:56)
Just absolutely amazing. I am in awe. and her team at VCU. reinvent the wheel. much for the work that you've been doing for quite some time now to figure out what's happening with these vapes.

to track this evolution and to help provide us with real data about what's going on and how we can empower others to do the same that you're this same information collected so that we can do something with that. And thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate this was truly an informative and great conversation.

Michelle Peace (27:25)
Yeah, no, of course. No, thank you for the conversation. It's been fun, but ⁓ most importantly, I appreciate that we're able to talk about this on a bigger plaque.

C.J. Stermer (27:36)
A huge thank you to the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth and Prevention Connections for their support. And thanks to Maurico Reyes for creating that great music score. Don't forget to share this with others, because the only way we can make real change is if we do it together. And hey, if you liked today's conversation, go ahead and give us that five star review. Now go out there, everybody. Go do good. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.