Vape spiking cases in the UK are a “new threat”, with schoolchildren among those falling victim to the offence, i has been told.
Police have warned they are increasingly concerned after officers found devices containing substances such as THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, and spice, a powerful synthetic drug.
“Many of you are aware of the rise of vapes. They’re very much a new threat,” said Dean Ames, the Metropolitan Police’s forensic drugs operation manager.
“People might be offered a vape but might not necessarily know what they are about to inhale. There are vapes out there which are dangerous.”
Spiking – when a substance is put into a person’s body through a drink or injection without their consent – is typically considered a risk in pubs and clubs. But police warned it was also an issue in schools because of the popularity of e-cigarettes among young people.
The Met’s chief licensing officer, Ian Graham, told i that Scotland Yard is “aware of vapes being used at school and of young people being spiked there”.
One headteacher also told i that pupils had fallen seriously ill after using spiked vapes, adding: “This could be one wrong choice that could result in a young person losing their life.”
Vape spiking can occur when a person purchases an e-cigarette containing unexpected intoxicants, when a person accepts a vape unaware that it has other substances in it or when someone’s vape is tampered with. Trading Standards has found around a third of vapes may be illegal, for reasons including containing banned substances.
The rise in vape usage, including among young people, and the potential for them to contain dangerous illegal substances is a concern for police.
But Helen Millichap, the Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Local Policing, suggested that cracking down on spiking in general was proving difficult, with the arrest figure “not as high as we’d like it”.
Part of the problem appears to be the challenge posed by detecting vape pens because of their size and because their smell fades quicker than cigarettes in busy venues such as nightclubs.
Eren Bessim, the training and development manager for the Safer Business Network, said staff in nighttime venues across London are taking “measures to be proactive, going outside, actually stopping people from smoking inside, thinking, ‘Have I spotted that person physically trying to give the pen to that person.'”
E-cigarette detection is also problematic in schools, where vape pens have been designed to look like highlighters, keyrings, and even functional pens, according to teachers and campaigners.
Though vape spiking in schools has been reported in the press, the true scale of the problem is difficult to pinpoint, according to the Met’s Mr Graham, who added: “It’s such a new methodology, we don’t know. It’s so easy to put those substances into a vape and pass it.”
A report from Action on Smoking (ASH) found that almost half (47 per cent) of the young people surveyed said their main source of procuring vapes was other people, rather than purchasing the devices themselves.
“For some young people, they are getting vapes from older teenagers who could be siblings or unfortunately sometimes it is more sinister and connected to county lines and grooming,” said Helena Conibear, chief executive of the Talk About Trust, an organisation that provides training on substance abuse in schools. County lines are where drugs are trafficked across the UK, often involving young people.
She told i that it is not only parents and teachers worried about vape spiking, but pupils, too.
“Wherever we go in the country and whatever assemblies we do, we always ask what do you think the biggest issues are in your community. Until two or three years ago, alcohol and cannabis were the first two issues raised but now, universally, everyone says vaping.”
Neil Coe, the headteacher of Westhoughton High School in Bolton, said the school had two major incidents around six months ago: one involving children falling ill at the local park and another involving a child in a school toilet cubicle. In both cases, the children were using vapes that had been given to them by someone else, unaware of what was in them.
Mr Coe said some of the children’s heart rates went up to more than 150 beats per minute, that they fell badly unwell and were taken to A&E.
After the female pupils fell ill in the park, which happened before school began, their friends ran to teachers for help.
“That’s a frightening moment for a headteacher, and I’m also a dad,” said Mr Coe.
“You realise in those moments that if the worst happens, in your school and with one of your kids, it’s going to be you that makes that call to a parent and that’s a reality check. For me as a head and for parents generally, this could be one wrong choice that could result in a young person losing their life.”
He said pupils as young as 12 and 13 are using vapes.
“I find myself in meetings with parents telling them to buy the vapes for the children. This is absolutely not what I want to do but if I don’t, it forces young people to buy them illegally from a man in a car park selling them out of the back of his car and that’s where the issues have come from that are life threatening.
“I don’t want my kids vaping at all but the reality is they are going to and it’s better to get a vape that is safer.”
He said he decided to speak out publicly after realising the threat posed by vapes and the lack of education around the issue, including among parents.
Mr Coe has introduced a staff rota to monitor the school toilets during lessons and break times – despite the school’s limited resources – and hands out suspensions for pupils caught vaping.
The warning from the Met Police about vapes comes as the force tries to crack down on spiking cases more broadly and increase the number of perpetrators arrested.
Ms Millichap said: “[Arrests] are not as high as we’d like.
“Some of that is to do with when reports are received and how realistic it ever will be to arrest somebody who has not been reported at the time it’s happening [as] that’s the best possible moment to secure and arrest.”
The force is working said it is working with nightime venues such as bars and nightclubs to help prevent spiking incidents.
In numbers: spiking
According to the Met, there are roughly 114 spiking allegations per month in London. The number is likely to be higher but underreporting from victims remains an issue.
Of those spiked, 60 per cent are female and 40 per cent male. Sixty-five per cent of cases take place between 6pm and 6am.
After being spiked, some victims are attacked. Women tend to be sexually attacked, while men tend to be robbed.
According to Drink Aware, some 900,000 UK adults reported having their drinks spiked in the 12 months leading up to its survey published in 2023.
Around half of incidents are not reported to police because people “don’t see the point.”
LGBTQ+ adults are disproportionately affected, with gender and sexual minorities almost twice as likely to report having ever been a victim of drink spiking compared to cis-heterosexual individuals.