Parents and teachers worry about the number of kids who vape cannabis. But many of them are using something far more dangerous \u2013 without even realising it<\/p>\n
I bumped into an old acquaintance the other day. Updating me on his children\u2019s ages, he said, with an eyeroll of resignation: \u201cMy daughter\u2019s 15 now; just found a cannabis vape in her room.\u201d It\u2019s an increasingly common and concerning situation for parents \u2013 with no way of telling if a vape does in fact contain weed (which comes with its own risks, just like vaping tobacco) or something much worse.<\/p>\n
Instead of the natural cannabinoids THC or CBD, these vapes can contain a much cheaper substitute: the \u201cprison drug\u201d spice. Last year scientists from the University of Bath analysed 1,923 vapes that had been confiscated from children in 114 schools in England, and found that 13% contained spice. In London and Lancashire it was 25%. And this is among vapes of all kinds, nicotine included, not just those that purported to contain cannabis. As for vapes labelled as containing THC, CBD or cannabis, when the drug-testing service Wedinos (part of Public Health Wales) examined 297 samples received in the year up to March 2025, it found that 39% contained spice.<\/p>\n
Chris Pudney, professor of applied biochemistry at the University of Bath, said researchers also found that these vapes are \u201covertly and blatantly available on the major social media platforms\u201d, which hold huge sway over young people. A recent report for ITV\u2019s Good Morning Britain featured a boy who was incredulous that, at the age of 12, he had become addicted to spice vapes advertised on social media as THC \u2013 which he \u201cbought for a tenner\u201d \u2013 and ended up in a coma with a collapsed lung.<\/p>\n
Scientists aren\u2019t allowed to buy drugs from dealers to test them, so to get an idea of how many supposedly THC products advertised on social media contain spice, Pudney used his experience with testing vapes seized by schools to \u201cvisually triage\u201d them (more on how to spot a spice-containing vape later) and estimated that 68% of those bought via TikTok contained spice, compared with 12% bought via Facebook.<\/p>\n
If, as a concerned adult, you look up spice on the internet, it\u2019s hard not to panic. You will find a heartbreaking BBC News clip about the drug turning users in north Wales into \u201czombies\u201d, along with reports of it causing deaths among homeless and prison populations. \u201cIt\u2019s not considered a drug like heroin that causes a lot of death,\u201d says Pudney, and is not to be confused with the mass killer fentanyl and other, even stronger, emerging synthetic opioids. But, he says, \u201cit can have acute health outcomes, depending on dosage\u201d.<\/p>\n
Spice has a dissociative affect, \u201cso it makes you feel like you\u2019re not in your body \u2013 which is why you can imagine people who are in prison or homeless like it \u2013 but it can also make you psychotic and potentially make you aggressive and give you a hypertensive crisis. At the worst end, it can give you seizures or cause a cardiac arrest.\u201d There\u2019s also a risk of serious accidents arising as a result of being incapacitated, which can easily happen because the effects can come on fast and strong.<\/p>\n
Spice isn\u2019t one drug \u2013 it\u2019s a catch-all name for a range of chemicals that are often referred to as synthetic cannabinoids. \u201cI think over 250 have now been recorded,\u201d says Pudney. New variations were developed in quick succession as existing versions were made illegal, \u201cin the same way we\u2019re seeing with synthetic opioids at the moment, that are changing all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Psychoactive Substances Act [2016] was there to stop that sort of whack-a-mole. We now ban things based on a whole class of molecules, so all synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists fall under the Psychoactive Substances Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cannabis itself was often viewed as a fairly harmless entry-level illegal drug in the 1990s. But in this century, a type of high-potency cannabis called skunk became the norm. Cultivated for a very high concentration of THC (the chemical that makes you feel stoned and potentially paranoid), it has barely any of the more calming CBD. Smoking lots of skunk in adolescence can increase the risk of psychotic illness fivefold, according to a paper in the BMJ.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s wrong, says Pudney, to view spice as synthetic cannabis. Where the THC in natural cannabis partially binds to certain receptors in cells, spice binds much more strongly to them. \u201cIt\u2019s what\u2019s called a full agonist, so it has a much stronger effect, and the structure of the molecule is completely different.\u201d How does it compare to high-dose THC as found in skunk? \u201cThere is no comparison,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s vastly more harmful than cannabis.\u201d In 2015, the Global Drugs Survey found that the risk of needing emergency medical treatment when using spice was 30 times greater than when using skunk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are relatively regular media reports of children collapsing in school after vaping spice,\u201d says Pudney. Spice is also addictive. \u201cWhen you\u2019re addicted to a really strong drug like spice, you simply don\u2019t have any choices left in your life,\u201d says Pudney. \u201cKids start stealing from their parents. When you\u2019re addicted to a drug like that, it puts you in the pocket of the drug dealer. So my real concern is that spice is so remarkably addictive that it places people, young people who are already vulnerable, in very risky situations.\u201d As with most poor health outcomes, those affected by poverty, trauma and lack of family support are at far greater risk.<\/p>\n
Spice flew through the prison system because it was easily smuggled in, soaked on to paper that could then be smoked without incriminating odours. Similarly, it can be vaped in school without detection. \u201cWhen we\u2019re speaking to schools about it, they\u2019ve got absolutely no idea if this is just a normal vape or a spice vape,\u201d says Annabelle Johnson, of the health and social care charity Change Grow Live. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons why we\u2019re finding so much of it in school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Spicer, senior lecturer in criminology at University of Bath, has been speaking to young people who use spice as part of his own research. \u201cThe spice vapes have no real smell,\u201d he says. \u201cThis makes it easier for children to use them and become addicted.\u201d Spicer says this cautiously, \u201cnot wanting to overstate it and whip up a moral panic around it. But, at the same time, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spice is cheap and easy to produce, and there is serious money to be made from it. Most forms in the UK are made from one of two molecules, says Pudney, and kits containing the components for these can be bought from China. Approximately \u00a31,000 to \u00a31,500 will get you enough to make a kilogram of spice \u2013 \u201cbut if you can sell it all in vape liquid, it will be worth about \u00a31m\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s in the last three to five years that vape devices have become \u201cthe new method of consumption\u201d for children, says Chris Henniker, children and young people\u2019s cluster manager for Change Grow Live. Originally, he\u2019d hear of THC vapes being bought for \u00a330 to \u00a340. \u201cThen we started to hear more and more young people saying they were buying \u2018THC vapes\u2019 for \u00a310, \u00a315. And then we started to hear these anecdotal adverse reactions, people being hospitalised.\u201d<\/p>\n