𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

As a doctor, I understand the dangers illegal vapes pose to our children. Since becoming a mother, youth vaping and vape shops have become more personal to me. I don’t want my children growing up in a world where walking into a vape shop and buying illegal and dangerous vapes is treated like just a normal part of growing up.

This isn’t about rejecting regulated vapes as a tool for adult smokers to quit, something the NHS and I both recognise. But a legal vape used by an adult smoker trying to quit smoking is light years away from a child walking into a shop on the high street and buying unregulated, illegal vapes marketed to young people, and we need to stop confusing the two.

Recent news stories about young people being spiked through vapes, alongside research from the University of Bath suggesting that up to one quarter of vapes confiscated in English secondary schools contained a drug called Spice, should alarm every parent, teacher and doctor in the country.

Spice is synthetic cannabinoids designed to mimic the effects of cannabis, but it can be far more harmful and unpredictable than cannabis itself. It’s made into a concentrated liquid that can be used in vapes and sold through social media.

The presence of Spice in vapes should alarm every parent, teacher and doctor. Some children won’t know they’re inhaling a powerful synthetic drug that they would never knowingly choose to take.

What’s most frightening is the uncertainty; children can’t make an informed decision if they don’t know what’s inside a vape. Some vapes may be compliant, but others may be illegal, counterfeit, contaminated, or much stronger than the legal limit, and sold by people with no interest in whether their customers are old enough, let alone whether they’re safe.

But “less harmful than smoking” doesn’t mean harmless for children, it certainly doesn’t mean harmless when products are illegal, over-strength, contaminated, or sold to young people.

The government has just announced a public consultation on plain packaging and hiding vapes from view in shops. This is why I’m worried that the government still isn’t focusing on the core danger. Measures like plain packaging and keeping products out of view have a role in reducing youth uptake but they don’t answer the more urgent question: what’s in these vapes, where do they come from and who’s selling them?

A toxic vape doesn’t become safe because the packaging is white or it’s kept behind a screen. If we don’t have proper testing and enforcement our children are still going to be exposed to illegal vapes; they’ll just be in less colourful packaging. In fact, it may make it harder to identify illicit vapes that are more likely to be contaminated with chemicals like Spice.

Young people addicted to these vapes need support, not shame. We need evidence-based education, proper advice for parents, and accessible cessation support in schools to be a central part of tackling this threat to our children’s health.

But, as with another major threat to children’s health and wellbeing like social media, parents and teachers cannot do this alone. They will always be fighting against a tidal wave unless support goes hand in hand with proper regulation and enforcement from the government.

The answer is to separate legitimate adult harm reduction from the fast-growing and dangerous youth market that is exposing children to unregulated and dangerous vapes, now available on far too many high streets.

That means a strong licensing system for shops that sell vapes, one still doesn’t exist and the Government has announced that the consultation to introduce one has now been put back to next year, it needs to be opened now.

It also means local councils and central government must enforce the law properly when it comes to illegal products, with stronger penalties for shops that put children in danger. Protecting children from threats like social media and illegal vapes requires education, support, regulation and enforcement.

That’s why I’m co-leading StampOutVapes, a campaign calling for a serious approach to youth vaping: protecting the role of smoking cessation with compliant vapes for adults while cracking down on illegal vapes being sold to children. Last Saturday, we launched a petition calling on the Government to take urgent action on youth vaping.

Parents and teachers can only do so much. The government needs to start treating this as a priority, not an afterthought

Dr Amalina Bakri is a doctor, mother and public health campaigner with more than 844,000 social media followers. She is a member of the Health Creator Leaders Network and a London-based specialist registrar and researcher at Imperial College London.