The TikTook sellers promoting YOUR youngsters deadly zombie medication: Undercover probe reveals how simple it’s to purchase harmful Spice-laced vapes which might be flooding UK colleges

Mere metres away from security cameras and TfL guards, a gangly teenage girl with fake eyelashes handed over three fluorescent pink and blue bottles.

Although they had been advertised as THC on TikTok, they were instead full of spice, a synthetic and addictive cannabinoid which can cause seizures, heart attacks, kidney damage and psychosis.

Popular amongst teenagers, the dealer had no qualms with selling to – what she believed was – a schoolchild.

Almost inherently deceitful, spice is used shamelessly by dealers as a ploy for Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound responsible for the euphoric, ‘high’ feeling often associated with marijuana. 

Although it is still illegal, naïve teenagers are more likely to buy the vapes if they think it is THC, because it is seen as less harmful, even though research shows 70 per cent of all TikTok accounts selling ‘THC’ were selling spice instead.

To uncover how easy it is to be duped into buying spice on social media, an undercover reporter for the Daily Mail posed as a schoolchild on TikTok, where at least 60 dealers were seen advertising across the social media an estimated £20million worth of spice. 

It follows the horrifying revelation that a quarter of all vapes confiscated from schools in parts of England contained spice, according to research by the University of Bath. 

A pick up was then arranged outside Forest Gate station in east London but when they were tested, instead of being THC as promised, they showed they were containing spice – the same drug that has killed hundreds of people in prison.

From state schools to the country’s most exclusive private colleges, students are routinely passing out in class and fighting for their life in hospital from a drug an ex-heroin addict would not even touch. 

‘The first time I ever tried it was when I was 11, but I got addicted when I was 12… three or four months later I collapsed in the front room.’

They are not words you would expect to come out of a little boy’s mouth, who had been arguing over chocolate biscuits moments before.

But Freddie Fenson is one of thousands of British school children ensnared by the terrifying effects of spice.

Although the 14-year-old was bouncing around his father’s living room in Dagenham, he had been in a coma fighting for his life just several months earlier in what teacher’s initially thought was an asthma attack.  

Despite his own brush with death, Freddie said the drug was so addictive that although he had spent two months recovering in hospital after his spice-induced coma ‘learning to walk’, he went and bought another vape as soon as he was discharged.

‘You know it’s a powerful drug because it put me in a coma but as soon as I got out I went straight back on it. No one in their right mind would do that but that’s how powerful it is,’ the young boy said.

Callum, now 20, said his private sixth form was full of people puffing on the vapes ‘in the back of class, in the toilets, in the changing rooms’.

Soon, Callum would smoke spice before he’d even left his bed: ‘I slept with it under my pillow. It was so easy and accessible, it doesn’t appear on standard 5, 10, or 12-panel drug tests, there’s no smell’.

Others were just as desperate to get their hands on the oily bottles, trading ‘airpods for them, electronics, valuables’, with one teenager ‘swapping the new iPhone for 100ml of the stuff’.

Spice in schools is relentless – Freddie recounted how his friend ‘passed out in assembly after we had a toke’ and needed to be taken ‘to hospital in a wheelchair’.

‘This was 10 o’clock in the morning,’ he said.

‘There was pressure to try spice at the beginning. All my friends at the time were older and I had to try it otherwise I would look weak.’

New to the sixth form, Callum similarly found vaping was a way for him to make friends – almost as if he were ‘in a smoking area of a club’.

‘It would sometimes be big crowds or you’d go on your own in class to the changing rooms cause you’re bored, have a couple of tokes, get w***ered and then go to class fried,’ the student said.

‘After two or three big hits I’d have to lie down in the changing room. But by the end of lunch break you’d be good to get up again.

‘It was just a fun thing, when you’re 16, 17, 18 you just want to get f***ed up. It was part of the fun that you would get so messed up. I guess you also look cool.’  

When he finally realised he needed to stop, he went cold turkey and threw up for days.

Professor Chris Pudney, who led the Bath study, found that a quarter of all vapes confiscated from schools in parts of England contained spice.

He told the Daily Mail: ‘Spice vape liquid is extremely cheap and addictive. It is trivially available on social media, where it is marketed as something that young people consider lower risk.

‘The advertisement of this material is illegal, and Ofcom have the power and statutory duty to compel social media companies to both remove this material and prevent it appearing. At present they have not chosen to use those powers.

‘International drug gangs are organising themselves via the world’s most popular online platforms.

‘TikTok and other social media sites are de facto shop fronts for the multi-million-pound sale of drugs.’

A former drug dealer told the Daily Mail that children were specifically targeted when selling spice vapes with ‘the low prices, the pretty colours, the candy-like flavourings and the child-friendly packaging of brands like Fanta and Skittles’.

The markup is huge, with 10ml bottles selling for between £20 and £40, even though the cost of production was pennies.

But the ex-heroin user admitted he would never touch the ‘extremely addictive’ synthetic substance himself, saying withdrawals are worse than some of the horrific Class A drugs.

‘I had a couple friends heavily addicted when I was 18 and it was legal here in the UK (spice was only criminalised in 2016), it was awful.

‘I’m an ex-heroin user and the withdrawals of spice look way worse than heroin withdrawals, and those will make you wanna kill yourself without a doubt.’

Freddie had also experienced terrifying side effects: ‘I was passing out on my bed because I was so high, falling over, passing out in random places, throwing up, it got to the point that it was obvious.

‘But that first high was so powerful, I don’t even know how to explain it.

‘I was always running back and trying to chase it. There wasn’t one day I wouldn’t have it.’

But the allure of an easily producible drug is tempting for some, as Freddie told how an 11-year-old at his school ‘stole £3,000 from his dad to pay for instructions to make these vapes’.

‘And now he’s making £400 a day selling them in school and it’s people in his year who are buying it.

‘He doesn’t go to school anymore because he makes so much money,’ he said.

Freddie, who would sell his own clothes and shoes to buy a bottle, even stole £5 from the counter in the kitchen.

‘It ruined my relationship with my dad for months. The worst bit was it was our last £5.’

Freddie’s father, Peter, said: ‘It’s no different to cocaine or heroin, they will lie and lie to your face.

‘It’s not until the damage is done that they’re then sorry. They don’t understand what they’re getting into.

‘This stuff does kill them. It kills them… You hear about it in prisons, you don’t expect it in schools. I want parents to know this is happening.’

Peter wept when he told how Freddie had been sent home from school early because of what they thought was his asthma.

‘I’ve dealt with his asthma before and this was not normal.

‘He said he wasn’t feeling well and was sent home from school because his chest was playing up.

‘He started going blue and we ended up using the whole pump.

‘And when I stepped back in the room he just went all white and collapsed on the floor.

‘I just kept pumping his inhaler and when the ambulance came they put him on nebulisers.

‘There was a whole crowd of people waiting for him once we got out of the ambulance.

‘He was dead when they arrived…it killed me,’ he said, as he wiped away tears.

He continued: ‘They put something under his armpit to his lungs to drain it of fluid, and then all hell broke loose.

‘They rushed him to another department and then had to induce a coma… And he stayed like that for two weeks.’

The penny only dropped when he had recovered that this was the impact of something more sinister.

‘The hospital put it down to asthma and vaping but when we began researching afterwards it all clicked. When I found out what he had been vaping I was angry, seriously angry,’ Peter said.

Freddie and Peter both felt that they didn’t get enough support from the school or social services, with the blame resting with the parents.

‘Schools aren’t doing enough to try and find it on kids, but then also what can they do? They don’t have metal detectors, they can’t have sniffer dogs,’ Freddie said.

Peter was desperate for Freddie to go to rehab but was not an option due to his age. One recommendation was to give him nicotine gum.

Peter said: ‘He’s just surrounded by it, all his friends do it, and their parents do it…it’s just too easy for these kids to get.

‘They all hide it in bushes to have on the way to and back from school. It’s just a big vicious cycle I can’t compete with.

‘I have no embarrassment with it, because it’s not my fault.

‘I’ve been through everything with Freddie and I have stood by every single step of the way to try and get him off it.

‘I just wish there was something magical that you could just wave. It would be amazing if we could do that.’

TikTok said: ‘We do not allow the trade or promotion of vaping products or illegal drugs on TikTok and this account had already been removed from our platform before we were approached by the Daily Mail.’

An Ofcom spokesperson said: ‘The sale and promotion of illegal drugs online can have devastating consequences. 

‘Under the Online Safety Act, social media platforms must assess and mitigate the risk of UK users encountering criminal content.

‘Our job is to make sure sites and apps are taking appropriate steps to do this. It’s not to tell platforms which specific posts or accounts to take down.

‘We’ve been pressing tech firms – including TikTok – on what they’re doing to comply with their duties, and we’ve shown we’ll take action where companies fall short.

‘In the first year of the Act coming into force, we’ve investigated nearly 100 platforms and issued 16 fines, and expect to announce more in the coming months.

‘It’s also important this happens alongside effective action from law enforcement against individuals selling illegal drugs online.’

A government spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: ‘Our sympathies are with the family and their ongoing efforts to receive the best possible care for their son.

‘Children should never vape and we are taking urgent action to tackle the worrying rise in this, including through a public awareness campaign focused on the dangers of new patterns of drug use and vapes.

‘We have already banned single-use vapes and our landmark Tobacco and Vapes Bill will ban vape advertising, reducing their appeal to young people.’

The Department of Education said: ‘We have always been clear that children should never vape, in or outside of school, and we are taking urgent action to tackle the worrying rise in youth vaping.

‘More widely, research shows behaviour in schools is improving and schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy that sets out what items are banned from school premises. Our updated RSHE guidance also sets out that pupils should be taught the facts about harmful substances and associated risks, including vaping and-drug taking.

‘More broadly, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will stop vapes from deliberately being marketed to children and our online laws are also clear that tech companies must remove illegal drug sales content from their platforms.’

WhatsApp have been approached for comment, as have the Metropolitan Police.