Vapes laced with the deadly ‘zombie’ drug ‘spice’ are wreaking havoc in British schools in a multi-million-pound trade fuelled by social media, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Pupils are collapsing in classrooms after smoking contaminated vapes, with children as young as 12 falling into comas.
Up to a quarter of vapes confiscated in secondary schools in parts of England are laced with spice, research shows.
The drug, said to be ‘worse than heroin’ due to its crippling effects and addictive nature, has caused hundreds of deaths in UK prisons.
Now it is flooding schools thanks to callous dealers who dupe children into thinking they are buying cannabis.
Today, the MoS can reveal:
- Schools across the UK are on high alert for spice following a spike in hospital admissions after students smoked contaminated vapes;
- Children as young as 11 are now making up to £400 a day dealing spice in school playgrounds after buying contaminated vapes over the internet – and selling them on;
- Spice dealers targeting youngsters are operating in plain sight on social media, with up to £20million worth of the drug advertised for sale in the UK online;
- One TikTok account shows a brazen dealer advertising an estimated £1.8million worth of spice in a single post.
Spice is the nickname for a group of lab-made drugs that mimic the effects of cannabis but are cheaper and more harmful. Spice can cause heart attacks, seizures and hallucinations, often with fatal consequences. Now, it is spreading across UK schools.
Schoolboy Freddie Fenson (pictured) was put into an induced coma after smoking a spice vape
Freddie, pictured here with his father Peter Fenson, told the MoS that school toilets are ‘filled’ with kids smoking spice
Spice is the nickname for lab-made drugs that mimic the effects of cannabis but are cheaper and more harmful
Research published by the University of Bath last year revealed that spice was found in 13 per cent of vapes confiscated in 114 schools across seven regions in England, rising to 25 per cent in London and Lancashire.
The study found hundreds of online accounts advertising ‘THC’ vape liquid. THC is the active ingredient in cannabis. But testing revealed about 70 per cent of these accounts on TikTok were selling spice instead.
Both THC and spice are illegal to possess, supply or produce. But teenagers are more likely to buy the vapes if they think it is THC, because it is seen as less harmful.
For dealers, spice is more profitable because it is cheaper to make and far more addictive. One boy, Freddie Fenson, told the MoS he was just 12 when he suffered what teachers thought was an asthma attack. Within hours he had collapsed and was taken to hospital, where he was put in an induced coma. It was only when he recovered later that the cause became clear: spice.
He was 11 when he first tried a vape, which a friend told him contained THC. Before long, he was selling his clothes to pay for more.
The vapes are sweet-flavoured to target children and are harder to keep out of schools than cannabis or cigarettes.
Freddie told the MoS: ‘It’s discreet. It doesn’t stink like weed. It’s as small as your finger, so you can hide it anywhere. It was easy for me to bring it into school.’
He said school toilets are ‘filled’ with kids smoking spice – and described one incident where a friend passed out in assembly.
Freddie described one incident where a friend passed out in school assembly. He was feeling dizzy and fell over before being rushed to hospital
Freddie said spice ‘ruined’ his childhood and he is now warning other children not to smoke it
‘We were all lining up and we just toked some THC. My friend was feeling dizzy – and he just fell over. They had to take him to hospital. This was 10am.’
Freddie, who attends a state school in Dagenham, east London, spent two weeks in a coma, followed by two months in hospital, and he had to learn to walk and talk again.
He said: ‘It has basically ruined my childhood. If I could tell kids my age, I would say don’t do it. It just takes one little bottle to end your life.’
Pupils are even lacing the vapes themselves. Freddie said he knows an 11-year-old who stole £3,000 from his dad to buy instructions over the internet on how to make spice vapes. He said: ‘Now he’s making £400 a day selling them in school to people in his year. He doesn’t go to school any more because he makes so much money.’
Professor Chris Pudney, who led the Bath study, said: ‘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.’
At least 60 UK dealers are using TikTok to advertise an estimated £20million worth of spice.
TikTok said its guidelines make clear that promoting illegal drugs is not permitted on its platform and had removed the accounts flagged by this newspaper.
But campaigners want Ofcom to use the powers it has under the Online Safety Act to force social media firms to permanently remove illegal content.
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Ivens.