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Roshan Chalamalasetti walked into the bathroom on his very first day of high school at Panther Creek. He saw an older student lift what looked like a mechanical pencil to his mouth and exhale a cloud.
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He left immediately. Coming straight from middle school, he said, it was “almost like a scary experience.”
Now a junior, he said the sight barely surprises him.
“It’s almost normalized. Like, it’s just like any other trip to the bathroom,” Chalamalasetti told The News & Observer.
Chalamalasetti is one of several Cary-area teenagers who have repeatedly asked the Town Council to expand its anti-smoking rules to include vaping and more public places. Mayor Pro Tem Lori Bush and council member Michelle Craig brought forward an update to Cary’s 2007 smoking ordinance at the April 16 council meeting, before the students’ first appearance. Teenagers then returned in May, June and September as council debated how far the rules should go.
The council is scheduled to vote Sept. 24 on a staff-recommended expansion of Cary’s smoking ordinance.
The high school students are asking officials to restrict where people can use products the teenagers themselves cannot legally buy. Federal law prohibits retailers from selling e-cigarettes or other tobacco products to anyone under 21.
Mansib Sacheha, a Green Hope High School student, said that when he was in middle school, a student carried vapes in a backpack and openly sold them to other students on his school bus.
“They knew who to go to if they ever needed or wanted a vape,” he said.
Experiences like this helped push him toward advocacy. He later searched online for ways to get involved and joined the Poe Center’s Youth Empowerment Team.
Saad Khan, a Green Hope High School student, recalled seeing teenagers vaping while fishing at a park.
“They were vaping, and that was their form of relaxation,” he said.
Sacheha, Chalamalasetti and Khan said they have never vaped. The American Heart Association says e-cigarette aerosol can contain nicotine, ultrafine particles and other potentially harmful substances, and that nicotine can affect the developing adolescent brain and lead to addiction. The group also says exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and lung cancer.
Vaping is already prohibited on Wake County school property, and the proposed ordinance does not address student-to-student vape sales. WCPSS treats vaping and other tobacco or nicotine violations as Level 1 offenses, which are generally handled with school-based interventions rather than out-of-school suspension. The teenagers say their goal is broader: reducing the places where young people see vaping treated as an ordinary part of daily life.
WCPSS said in a 2025 presentation that it planned prevention and cessation efforts, including vaping education beginning in third grade. The district did not provide The N&O with current districtwide or school-level vaping incident data by deadline.
Cary’s current ordinance prohibits smoking in town-owned buildings and vehicles but does not cover e-cigarettes or extend to outdoor town grounds, parks or enclosed public places.
Cary staff is recommending a much broader ordinance that would prohibit both smoking and vaping on all town-owned property, including parks, greenways and trails, and inside enclosed public places across Cary, such as restaurants, bars, stores, theaters and offices open to the public.
The proposal would not prohibit smokeless nicotine products such as nicotine pouches.
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A person who continued smoking or vaping after being told to stop could face a fine of up to $50.
The proposal includes exemptions for private homes and vehicles, qualifying cigar bars and tobacco shops, private clubs and some hotel rooms, and would allow Cary’s town manager to designate certain outdoor areas where smoking and vaping would remain permitted.
The ordinance would take effect July 1, 2027, if approved.
State law already generally prohibits smoking inside restaurants and bars, with limited exceptions. Cary’s proposal would also prohibit e-cigarette use there and extend the local rules to other enclosed public places.
Other Wake County municipalities have already expanded smoking and vaping bans. Raleigh passed a broader tobacco-free ordinance Jan. 20 that took effect April 20, while Fuquay-Varina and Morrisville restrict smoking, vaping or tobacco use in municipal parks and other town property.
The American Heart Association alerted Green Level Heart Club members to the Cary advocacy opportunity and provided general information and materials supporting smoke- and aerosol-free indoor public places. Emma Kate Burns, the group’s North Carolina government relations director, said participation was voluntary and students wrote their own remarks. Separately, the Poe Center teaches students research, public speaking and how to engage elected officials.
“They’re the ones that do it, and it’s their voice,” said Virginia Johnson, the Poe Center’s substance use prevention director.
In May, Jenica Inigo, co-president of Green Level High School’s Heart Club, told council about a classmate caught vaping in a hotel bathroom during a school trip. When she returned in September, she explicitly asked Cary to include e-cigarettes in its smoking regulations and extend the rules to indoor public spaces.
Bush said the students’ examples of what they encounter every day had made a difference, calling their advocacy “an important reminder that local policy can help avoid normalizing nicotine use around our young people.”
Council members did not reach consensus at their June 23 work session on how broadly the town should regulate smoking, vaping and other nicotine products.
Council member Carissa Kohn-Johnson said she supported protecting people from secondhand smoke or vapor but questioned restricting nicotine products that do not expose bystanders.
“If it’s not affecting other people, we let … adults do what they want,” she said.
Mayor Harold Weinbrecht raised enforcement as a concern during the council’s discussions, saying additional restrictions could require more police time while the town is trying to address public-safety staffing needs.
Two years after that first high-school bathroom encounter, Chalamalasetti said the change in how ordinary vaping now feels is why he wanted adults to hear his experience.
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He said he wanted to tell his story “because of how normalized it’s becoming.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2026 at 8:51 AM.