Pupils aged just 12 left in coma by vapes laced with ‘zombie’ drugs as up to a QUARTER of e-cigarettes confiscated in UK secondary schools found to contain deadly ‘spice’

E-cigarettes laced with deadly ‘zombie’ drug ‘spice’ are wreaking havoc in British schools in a multimillion-pound trade fueled by social media, The Mail on Sunday has revealed.

Students faint in classrooms after smoking dirty e-cigarettes, and even 12-year-old children fall into comas.

Research shows that up to a quarter of e-cigarettes seized from secondary schools in some parts of England are laced with spice.

The drug, said to be ‘worse than heroin’ due to its disabling effects and addictive nature, has caused hundreds of deaths in UK prisons.

Now schools are being flooded thanks to insensitive dealers who trick children into thinking they are buying marijuana.

Today MoS can reveal:

• Schools in the UK are on high alert for spice after a spike in hospital admissions after students smoked contaminated vapes;
• Children as young as 11 now earn up to £400 a day selling spices in school playgrounds after buying and selling dirty vapes online;
• Spice dealers targeting young people operate openly on social media, with £20 million worth of drugs advertised for sale online in the UK;
• A TikTok account shows a brazen seller advertising an estimated £1.8 million worth of spices in a single post.

Spice is the nickname for a group of laboratory-made drugs that mimic the effects of marijuana but are cheaper and more harmful. The spice can cause heart attacks, seizures and hallucinations, often with fatal consequences. Now it is spreading to schools in England.

Freddie, pictured here with his father Peter Fenson, told the MoS that school toilets were ‘full of’ children drinking spice.

Spice is the nickname given to laboratory-made drugs that mimic the effects of marijuana but are cheaper and more harmful.

Research published by the University of Bath last year found that 13 per cent of e-cigarettes seized from 114 schools in seven counties in England contained spice, with this rate rising to 25 per cent in London and Lancashire.

The research found hundreds of online accounts advertising ‘THC’ vaping liquid. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana. But tests found that nearly 70 percent of these accounts on TikTok were selling spices instead.

Both THC and the spice are illegal to possess, supply or manufacture. But teens are more likely to buy e-cigarettes if they think they have THC because it’s seen as less harmful.

For sellers, spice is more profitable because it is cheaper to make and much more addictive. A boy called Freddie Fenson told the MoS he was just 12 when he had what his teachers thought was an asthma attack. He fainted within a few hours and was taken to the hospital where he was put into a coma. But later, when he recovered, the cause became clear: Spice.

He was 11 years old when he first tried e-cigarettes, which a friend told him contained THC. She soon began selling her clothes to pay for more money.

E-cigarettes are sweet-flavored to target children and are harder to keep out of schools than marijuana or cigarettes.

Freddie told the MoS: ‘This is confidential. It doesn’t smell like weed. Since it is as small as your finger, you can store it wherever you want. ‘It was easy for me to bring him to school.’

He said school toilets were ‘full’ of children smoking spices and described an incident when a friend passed out during an assembly.

Freddie described an incident in which a friend fainted at a school assembly. He felt dizzy and fell before being taken to hospital.

Freddie says spice ‘ruined’ his childhood and now warns other children not to smoke

‘We were all lining up and got some THC. My friend was feeling dizzy and fell. They had to take him to the hospital. “It was 10 in the morning.”

Freddie, who went to a state school in Dagenham, east London, was in a coma for two weeks, then spent two months in hospital and had to learn to walk and talk again.

He said: ‘It basically ruined my childhood. If I could tell kids my age, I’d say don’t do it. ‘All it takes is one small vial to end your life.’

Students even connect electronic cigarettes themselves. Freddie said he knew an 11-year-old boy who stole £3,000 from his father to buy online instructions on how to make spice vapes. He said: ‘He now earns £400 a day selling them to people in his year at school. ‘He doesn’t go to school anymore because he earns too much money.’

Professor Chris Pudney, who led the Bath research, said: ‘International drug gangs are organized through the world’s most popular online platforms. ‘TikTok and other social media sites are de facto shop windows for millions of pounds worth of drug dealing.’

At least 60 retailers in the UK are using TikTok to advertise the spice, worth an estimated £20 million.

TikTok said its own rules clearly state that the promotion of illegal drugs is not allowed on its platform, and it removed the accounts flagged by this newspaper.

But campaigners want Ofcom to use its powers under the Online Safety Act to force social media firms to permanently remove illegal content.

Additional reporting: Elizabeth Ivens.