Эпизод 91: Взятие подкаста - Инициатива по борьбе с вейпингом, Джейдин Банди и Милан Венегас

30 мая, 2025 /
Спенсер Туиней /

Суп с супом

Episode 91: Podcast Takeover - Anti-Vaping Initiative, Jaidyn Bundy and Milan Venegas

00:00 / 15:21

Wendy Dau: Welcome everyone to the next episode of Provo City School District’s What’s up with the Sup podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau. This week, I’m excited to announce our first podcast takeover.

Our district’s communications department student intern, Milan Venegas, invited Provo Youth City Council and Youth Court Chair, Jaidyn Bundy, to discuss the Youth Court’s anti- vaping campaign. Jaidyn is a student leader who saw a need among Provo’s youth and launched an educational campaign to address concerns she and the youth court identified. You won’t want to miss this special takeover episode, but first here are our updates.

Congratulations to all of our newly graduated seniors. We are so proud of you and all you’ve accomplished to all our students, staff, and families, thank you for a great year. Have a fun, safe, and restful summer.
На сайте нашего округа можно ознакомиться с рядом политик и процедур.
- Зайдите на сайт provo.edu.
- Нажмите на "Политика, формы и документы".
- You can click on review draft policies here to create your input.
The next school board meeting is on Tuesday, June 10th.
- The Study Session will begin at 4:00 PM in Boardroom One at the district office, and the Business Meeting will begin at 7:00 PM in the Professional Development Center.
This summer, we will continue our weekly podcast, so stay tuned, and I will continue with my weekly video cast through June. Then I will start them up again in August, so watch your email or my social media for my video cast.

——–

Milan Venegas: My name is Milan Venegas, and today, you’re in for a treat, because we’re gonna be meeting with our Youth Court President, Jaidyn Bundy, who will be telling us about her anti vaping initiative. In 2019, it was found that 5.4 million middle school and high school students reported using e-cigarettes and like vaping things pretty much.

And then Jaidyn has decided to take on that difficult challenge to kind of putting it to stop. So Jaidyn, do you wanna introduce yourself a little bit?

Jaidyn Bundy: Yeah, I’m happy to be here. I’m Jaidyn Bundy. I’ve been running Youth Court for two and a half years, and I’ve been part of it for five years. I joined when I was in seventh grade and at first I joined and I had no clue what it was.

I kind of thought it was like a mock court and a lot of people do. They think it’s a core where you just kind of pretend to have cases, but we take on real cases. And I showed up and it was a little intimidating because there’s like police officers and a lot of other students running it, but it has been an amazing experience and it is such an awesome opportunity that a lot of people don’t realize they have.

Milan Venegas: So like what type of cases do you usually see at youth court, then?

Jaidyn Bundy: We’ve seen like a range of cases. I’ve been surprised, like we’ve had golf cart cases where we’ve had, okay, so if you drive a golf cart and you don’t have a license and it’s not registered, you can get in trouble.

And so we’ve had some of those. We’ve had minor theft. We used to get a ton from Days, which is like a local store that’s by the high school and people would still like 99 cent donuts. Or we’ve had bigger cases where we’ve had minor assault, we’ve had theft, we’ve had some major car vandalism. And so you kind of never know what to expect. Because you see a lot of different cases there.

Milan Venegas: So how did you like first realize that like vaping was becoming such a big issue among students?

Jaidyn Bundy: So I joined in seventh grade and I was really overwhelmed and I had no clue really what was going on. So I’d sit and I wouldn’t say anything in the, any of the cases and I’d just listen.

And after a while, once I started becoming a little bit more confident with my role in Youth Court, I started to really be intentional with the cases we were taking on and kind of start noticing those patterns. And I started seeing that for like two years, three fourths of our cases were all vaping cases or illegal substance, like misuse.

And that started to be a crazy problem that originally we kind of thought of in a different way. Like we were like, okay, another vaping case, and we just see so many of them. But now we’re really trying to do something about it to change that.

Milan Venegas: Why do you think like so many teens are turning into vaping and stuff like recently?

Jaidyn Bundy: So there have been a lot of different factors. Right now I’m like writing an English research paper on the factors that lead students to vaping. Because it is a little bit different than we’d expect. Like there’s of course students who have a lot of stress and anxiety in their life and they think that that is something that might help distract them. Or bring some different emotions instead of what they’re feeling. Whereas we’ve actually seen through research that vaping actually can increase stress and anxiety and lead to serious depression. We’ve also seen sometimes people who struggle in class, whether they’re struggling to understand or aren’t feeling motivated, they will leave and start hanging out in places that aren’t as monitored by teachers.

And those places have a lot more access to vape devices. And so then they start communicating and hanging out with people that are vaping as well.

Milan Venegas: Why do you think people should be caring about this issue overall? Obviously vaping has been a great issue with three fourths of them being vape cases, so I want to know like why as a fellow student that doesn’t vape, why should I care about other kids vaping and trying to get them to stop?

Jaidyn Bundy: I think one of the problems that makes this issue so scary is that there have been like misinformation sent out where vaping isn’t a problem. Like people saying that, oh, vaping isn’t as bad as smoking.

Vaping actually helps you quit smoking, or vaping doesn’t have the same chemicals. It’s different. It’s safer. And so this misinformation is causing students to not realize how harmful it is.

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: And I feel like when we don’t completely address the issue and understand the issue, and when we’re not educating students on this issue, then it becomes a bigger problem that we’re not even recognizing or fully trying to stop before it becomes something that we can’t really control.

Milan Venegas: Okay. Cool. Yeah. So like do you think it’s like affecting the culture of schools then because of that misinformation so people think it’s okay overall?

Jaidyn Bundy: I definitely think it is. Like as I’ve been doing this English research paper, I’ve been looking up, even just trying to find pictures of infographics about vaping.

Half of them were like, oh, vaping’s way better than smoking. Here’s the statistics, or stuff like that. Whereas those were actually promoted by those companies that were creating those substances. I feel like it really affects the culture because if people believe that this is something that can be normal in going to the bathroom and like vaping– or I’ve even had cases where kids are picking them off the ground and vaping them and thinking that that’s okay, and thinking that that is something that we can normalize, and that isn’t a super harmful issue is scary and it should never be part of our culture in the first place. Overall, it’s been wild.

Milan Venegas: So for your initiative, what is like that main goal?

Jaidyn Bundy: So how youth court works is there is a Chairperson and they kind of lead the case, talk to the youth who was there trying to understand kind of what’s going on from their perspective.

And one question I always ask is, do you understand why we don’t want you vaping? Or why you shouldn’t vape? And they always are like, oh, like it hurts your lungs, right? And then I’m like, Hey, what else? And they don’t have anything else– that it does affect your health. For example, like, it can harm your heart and how fast it’s moving and how it’s pumping. And it can lead to heart attacks. It can cause seizures. Of course, on the mental side, it can increase depression, anxiety. On the social side, it harms your brain’s development, especially as a minor, and so it makes it harder for you to develop those relationships or even just like the mistrust we see with parents and friends and stuff like that.

It is just not healthy. And so what I’ve been trying to do is find a way to help people understand what vaping really is so that they don’t ever feel comfortable like picking off a vape device off the ground or when a friend offers it to them, it’s not just like, oh, my lungs might get injured or may get addicted.

It’s, these are guaranteed negative effects that are gonna harm you, and so this initiative is taking that and bringing it to the schools.

And so the ways that we’ve been trying to inform people through this initiative is the first step is we’ve been designing these posters that have been giving, they’re kind of correct infographics that tell you all the negative health effects and the different chemicals that are in vape devices.

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: So that when people are putting those into their bodies, they understand that the chemicals that are used are in deodorant, they’re in pesticides, they’re in perfume, they’re in fog machines and that kind of stuff. I hope it makes them uncomfortable. Like I hope those, they see those posters and they’re like, hold up.

That’s not something I’d ever want to put in my body.

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: So that we can develop a new feeling around vaping where it isn’t something good, it isn’t something safe that’s like better than smoking or something you can do for a bit and quit. It’s a harmful, addictive substance. But that’s something that a lot of people just don’t understand.

Milan Venegas: Yeah. Like I remember back at Provo, I think during my sophomore year, they touched on it a little bit and the issue that was creating, because I remember they put up like signs saying like that they have devices that can like detect if you’re like vaping in the restrooms or something.

Jaidyn Bundy: I’ve even heard about it in EW that they exist, but I’ve never heard any of them going off.

And it’s just something that we really need to make sure that we’re watching and so that these kids can actually receive the help they need and information they need. In places we’re seeing that kids are vaping are in those bathroom stalls. And so if you’re vaping and then you see a poster right there that’s like, oh, here is a nicotine vape, here’s what’s in it.

And so that at least they understand?

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: And then some other phases that we really wanna work on is from the Youth Court perspective, we take in their cases and we try and give them some projects, essays, research things to help them understand why vaping’s so harmful. But the thing is, we don’t have a lot of programs or support in that.

There are a few like online vaping courses and things like that, but they’re not very effective or sometimes they aren’t– like they just don’t work. And so we’re really hoping to try and increase the amount of resources students have online to either quit vaping, learn more about vaping, or for parents who realize their teen’s vaping, to give them some support and options.

And then after that, we’re hoping to flood social media with more information about that. Like my mom was telling me about how in her generation, smoking was a really big problem. And they had this huge media movement against smoking, and they had tons of advertisements and ads and things like that. They were like, here is what happens to you when you smoke.

Here’s the negative health effects showing people with their crazy lungs and things like that. And that was everywhere. And that made people just never want to smoke. Or at least a majority, because they would think of smoking and see those things. But we’ve never had that for vaping. And that’s something that I think we have seen done and we’ve seen done effectively and we should be doing again.

Milan Venegas: Overall, have you seen any challenges with creating your initiative and stuff?

Jaidyn Bundy: Definitely. I feel like one of the main challenges is there are still a lot of people that are like, oh, vaping isn’t as harmful as smoking. Like, is this something we really need to focus on? Or we’ve seen people who already have a lot of policies and bills against vape devices for minors and smoke devices for minors.

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: But we’ve seen they’re really not effective and there are a lot of loopholes and ways to get around them. I had a friend who was telling me about how her cousin got all these vape devices, just bought them online without an ID. They were able to purchase it. It just showed up at their door as minors, and–

Milan Venegas: That’s actually insane.

Jaidyn Bundy: I know. Or another big problem is we see people in the workforce who are working with people that are adults and have access to that and they’re getting it through there. And so there’s so many different ways that it is really easy for minors to get access to this. We could always do more through policies, through regulation to increasing business, like regulation on those things so that kids don’t have such an easy access to it.

Milan Venegas: Yeah, for sure. How does it feel like taking on this challenge as a student leader?

Jaidyn Bundy: I feel like it’s definitely been interesting. Because as a student, I still have my busy schedule. I’m still getting ready for college. I’m still trying to keep up with homework and sports, and things like that, that sometimes I feel like I don’t have as much of the time and resources to really attack the problem like I want to.

Like I’ve been working on those posters recently, and I hate how sometimes other more pressing due date homeworks or things like that have to take a little bit of the lead for a minute so that I can get that done and then fall back on this project. And so sometimes that makes it feel like I can’t push it as far and as fast as I want it to go.

And another opposition is I feel like, as I’m like 18, I am, don’t have a ton of political power, or I don’t have like a career that really makes me super experienced in this, and so sometimes it’s hard to be taken seriously, or to get the resources so that I can really show that this issue does matter, and that we do need to be taking huge steps to address it.

Milan Venegas: Yeah, for sure. I feel like it’s interesting that you say that people don’t exactly take you seriously, because I feel like considering you are a student, like you are seeing this firsthand, especially with your involvement in Youth Court. So that’s always gonna be something that’s interesting to me, why we don’t always get taken seriously.

Mm-hmm. As like younger people.

Jaidyn Bundy: Mm-hmm. That is true–

Milan Venegas: When it comes to issues like that.

Jaidyn Bundy: Yeah. And I have been really grateful for my experience at Youth Court because that’s been able to connect me with a lot of police officers that have been working in the schools, and seeing these patterns as well.

I’ve seen the students who’ve dealt with this on a personal level. Because a lot of times we see like adults and things like that fighting these problems, but there’s definitely a disconnect. I am seeing these students in the hallways after I’ve handled their cases or seeing them change or not change and things like that.

And sometimes the people who are making these decisions aren’t seeing that on a personal level, and don’t understand exactly what they need or what kind of support we can give them.

Milan Venegas: Yeah, for sure. So like what advice would you give to someone that is trying to quit or they have a friend that they want to quit?

Jaidyn Bundy: I would say while there aren’t a ton of resources out there, there are still so many people that are willing and ready to help you. Even if talking to a school counselor or a parent feels awkward, it will change how you address this problem, because it’ll give you a lot more support. And also just learning a little bit more about what you are participating in can hopefully make sure that your decisions, you’re more aware and you’re more educated as you choose.

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: And also quitting any addiction is really hard.

Milan Venegas: Mm-hmm.

Jaidyn Bundy: The easiest way to do that, honestly, is to create a group of people that you can trust, that can help keep you accountable, give you the support you need, and help you through this addiction so that you are supported and there are resources and there are ways to get help.

And there are a lot of things online that you can do anonymously, like they’ve been really emphasizing Safe UT. And that is another really good resource. So just start– just start reaching out, start asking questions. Start trying to make a change in your life, because you will see the difference. And as you slowly get out of it, you’ll see how much of an effect it has on you.

Because I’ve seen a lot of youth court cases where they come through, and they’re like, oh, it probably hurts my lungs. I’m not addicted. But then, in retrospect, when we have their final case and they’ve stopped vaping, learned to quit, gathered that support, they’ve been like, I didn’t realize how much it’s been affecting me.

Or we’ve even seen a students who even in like a case setting, act completely differently. And we want people to be able to make that change and we want them to have that support, and help them understand that being addicted to vaping isn’t normal and it shouldn’t be something that we view as normal or view as okay.

And we want them to get that help and that support so that they can overcome that addiction.

Milan Venegas: I really love how you’re just like tackling this like big pressing issue for students. Like I think it’s super inspiring as another student that is involved with issues and trying to get involved, and I love that you’re kind of just like a role model overall for standing up against that issue, like it’s pretty amazing.

Jaidyn Bundy: Thank you.

Milan Venegas: Like to be doing that at like such a young age. Mm-hmm. It’s cool. Hey, I want, I wanted to thank you for being on the pod. It’s been real.

Jaidyn Bundy: It’s been so fun. Thank you.

Milan Venegas: It’s been fun. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. It’s been awesome.

Wendy Dau: Thank you for joining me for this episode of What’s Up With the Sup.

As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcasts. If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast@provo.edu. And don’t forget to join us again next week for another new episode of What’s Up with the Sup.

Have a fantastic weekend everyone.