Fears over vapes laced with a highly addictive drug have triggered calls for drug education to be given greater priority on the curriculum for primary school aged children.
Spice: A Dangerous Synthetic Drug
Experts warn that spice can be as addictive as crack, with children as young as 11 using vapes containing the drug. Spice is a synthetic cannabinoid originally designed to mimic the effects of cannabis, but is more harmful and unpredictable than cannabis, according to NHS Inform. The drug, which can make people dissociate, is highly popular among prisoners, with reports describing users as falling into a “zombie” state.
Charity Calls for Earlier Education
Drugs and alcohol education charity Hope UK said education needs to start earlier in children’s lives as harmful vapes are increasingly sold on social media and under the counter in corner shops. Kids are often “completely unaware of the risks” and that even adults would struggle to tell the difference between legal and illegal vape products, the national charity warned.
Hope UK warned that the Government’s efforts to clampdown on colourful packaging and appealing vape flavours won’t address this problem.
Study Finds Spice in School Vapes
A University of Bath study in September found spice in 13% of 1,923 e-cigarettes and e-liquids it analysed from 114 schools across seven regions in England. The figure rose to around 25% in two regions - London and Lancashire.
Professor Chris Pudney, from the Department of Life Sciences at the university, this week told The Mirror spice-laced drugs are being found in secondary schools, with children in year seven or eight - as young as age 11 - among users. He said there's a “real mixed economy” with some older kids purposefully using spice-laced vapes, while other younger kids are sometimes unknowingly using the drug.
“For younger kids, I think that is the real worry - that someone offers them a vape and says: ‘Try this, you'll like it.’ And it's very strong drugs,” he said. “They probably will quite like it, but very quickly you can become addicted and not really know what you've got in hand.”
He added: "Some kids are give it so that they become addicted and so that they can be manipulated. It's remarkably addictive. It gets compared to crack in terms of its addictive potential."
Prof Pudney said drug education has to be handled with proper expertise as when done badly it can end up promoting drugs. But he continued: “The availability on social media of spice vape liquid is really high. It's incredibly available. The major social media platforms are used as shop fronts that advertise and sell this material. So if we're thinking about education, I really think having something hand in glove for young people when they're learning about social media and social media use and what’s safe and what’s not to talk to something about how you will encounter blatant drug dealing on social media. Just because it's on social media doesn't mean it's not illegal, doesn't make it legitimate, doesn't make it safe.”
Government Measures Insufficient
Sarah Brighton, chief executive of Hope UK, told The Mirror the Government’s efforts to clampdown on colourful packaging and appealing vape flavours won’t address this problem. Drug-laced vapes are usually obtained by buying a bottle of spice vape liquid which can then be used to fill a rechargeable vape.
She said: "We know that the change in UK law last year banned the single-use disposable vapes that were so appealing to children and young people. However, this has just shifted the problem and what we're seeing now is a vast array of different kinds of rechargeable and reusable vaping ‘systems’ in shops, together with the accompanying vape liquids. In appearance these products bear an uncanny resemblance to the previous single-use disposable vapes."
She continued: "The main problem we're finding with spice-laced vapes is that children are completely unaware of the risks. Most adults would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a legal and an illegal vape."
Hope UK Urges Government Support
Hope UK, which is facing closure after working on the frontline for more than 170 years, is urging the Government to give more support to drug prevention charities. It also wants the area to continue to be a priority on the curriculum and for life skills to be included in drug education, as well as more investment in youth programmes.
Ms Brighton added: "Buying an illegal vape from an unscrupulous seller on your local high street is not the only way to obtain them as they are easily available via the internet. This is why education and awareness raising is so vital from quite a young age. Because we're seeing children in primary school bringing these vapes onto the school playground, we need to make sure we get to them first. Young children have a very clear understanding of what is safe and what is not safe, but it's up to us to teach them."
