When Emma’s mother was woken up in the middle of the night by a noise outside, she was shocked to see her teenage daughter crawling underneath their car, seemingly looking for something.
It was 3am, mid-January, and the 15-year-old had school in just a few hours.
Emma’s mum had no idea that the Year 11 student was suffering paranoid drug-induced psychosis which had made her think dealers had left a bomb under her parents’ car.
Nor did Emma’s mum know that earlier in the day her daughter, as usual, had been smoking the ‘zombie’ drug spice with friends at school, and had also ordered a delivery of the drug to their home using TikTok, to be left under the car’s back wheel.
‘My brain was fried, I couldn’t think straight or sleep, and had forgotten if I’d left money out for my dealer,’ Emma says today. ‘I knew I had my new spice vape, but suddenly got paranoid that if they hadn’t been paid, the dealer would plant a bomb under our car.’
Emma, now 16, admits she had smoked cannabis and marijuana a few times. But in November last year, she also inadvertently smoked the synthetic version of the drug in a vape with friends in the changing rooms at her Lancashire school.
Since that first puff, Emma says she was hooked – and her life unravelled in a way that would shock any parent.
‘That first time I vaped spice I thought it was THC, the liquid version of cannabis,’ she explains. ‘But this was different – it soon felt like I was swimming, I had stomach cramps, a crushing headache, and I just had to lie down on the floor to help me cope.
‘I had no idea what was going on, I had horrific paranoia, it was a whole mess of stuff going on.’
In coming days and weeks, the group of friends escalated their usage at school – each regularly putting others into the recovery position on the floor of the changing rooms or on the school fields when the drug left them unable to stand, or even sit.
But despite that first experience of the synthetic cannabinoid, Emma wanted more and more – going on to smoke it several times a day with friends at school and in local parks.
Soon she was stealing money from her mother’s purse to pay for her habit. Her attendance and grades plummeted at school.
‘I hated spice more than anything in the world, but it was all I wanted – it’s so hard to describe,’ she says. ‘It was only when Mum saw me under her car that night, and thought I was having a breakdown, that she found a local drugs therapist who helped me get clean.’
That intervention saved Emma from a future she says she now ‘shudders to think about’.
‘Friends of mine who’d vaped with me are now ferrying spice to various places around Blackpool to pay for more. Some are even prostituting themselves, and almost none of them sat any of their GCSEs,’ she says. ‘I’m so, so lucky to have had proper help from a trained therapist – so many kids my age have nothing now because of spice, it’s sucked them in, and they can’t stop.’
Emma – whose name has been changed to protect her identity – managed to pass five GCSEs this summer, and now has a place at sixth-form college to study administration. Before she took that first puff on a spice vape in the autumn, she was predicted nine good passes and had her sights set on A-levels and potentially university.
‘If I’d carried on with spice, there was no way I’d have even turned up to any of my exams – our school exam hall had loads of people missing this summer, and I’ve got a pretty good idea why.’
Emma is just one of potentially tens of thousands of children who have been unwittingly lured into taking the deadly drug in recent months through vapes, a terrifying phenomenon which experts have described as a ‘silent epidemic’ and which could have shockwaves through society for years.
This month startling new data released by Bath University revealed up to a quarter of all vapes confiscated from school pupils now contain spice. The nationwide survey analysed almost 2,000 vapes from 114 schools in seven regions across England, with London and Lancashire – where Emma lives – reporting the highest rates, 23 and 27 per cent respectively.
Spice is the nickname given to synthetic cannabinoids – lab-made drugs that were originally designed to mimic the effects of cannabis. However, it is usually much stronger than cannabis, causing potential side-effects such as seizures, heart attacks and breathing trouble.
Victims also suffer dizziness, vomiting, racing hearts, sweating, panic attacks and paranoia.
It has been nicknamed the ‘zombie drug’, because its turns people virtually unconscious.
One study reported that 48 per cent of male prisoner deaths analysed between 2015 and 2020 involved synthetic cannabinoids, and police forces across the country now fear that spice is sweeping schools across the UK under the radar, after multiple reports of pupils collapsing the length and breadth of the UK.
The Bath study’s author Professor Chris Pudney, from the university’s Department of Life Sciences, says the issue of children vaping spice in the UK is ‘everywhere’, and growing rapidly.
‘This is dealers taking advantage of so many children vaping, especially with reusable vapes,’ he says, ‘which means they can sell what kids they think is liquid THC, but is actually spice.’
Spice is a fraction of the cost of THC, Chris explains – a spice vape can cost just £2, a THC liquid refill more than £40 – but just one puff on spice, and the user doesn’t want anything else.
‘This is one of the most potent, pernicious, damaging drugs in existence, and it’s going straight into schools, ruining the futures of a generation,’ he warns.
As Emma found, these spice vapes are incredibly easy to buy online – especially through social media sites. Worryingly, sellers are actively targeting younger users with spice.
Surveying Facebook, Instagram and TikTok over a three-month period, the researchers found that as the demographic of the social media platform became younger, the greater the proportion of the ‘e-liquids’ marketed as THC actually contained the zombie drug – 12 per cent on Facebook compared with 68 per cent on TikTok.
‘A simple search of social media platforms instantly brings up hundreds of accounts selling THC vapes, many of which contain spice,’ he says. ‘THC and spice are illegal in the UK and their advertisement for sale is illegal. Ofcom has a statutory duty to compel these social media companies to tackle this issue under the Online Safety Act.’
In response to claims it is not doing enough to police this activity, an Ofcom spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘We’re holding companies to account – we’ve already launched investigations into 47 sites and apps, and expect to announce more in the coming weeks and months. It’s also important this happens alongside effective action from law enforcement against individuals selling illegal drugs online.’
Steve Pope, the Lancashire-based addiction therapist who successfully treated Emma, says that before 2025 he did not have one patient hooked on spice under his team’s support – now he has ‘around 30’ children age 11 to 16, a number which is ‘growing almost daily’.
‘This has come out of nowhere, and so incredibly fast – it’s terrifying,’ he said. ‘Last month alone three children we are supporting in Blackpool were admitted to hospital after having vaped spice, two with cardiac arrest and one with heart failure.
‘This is a drug that’s dirt cheap, it doesn’t smell, it’s easier for kids to get than cigarettes, it’s a drug-dealer’s dream – I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg in my clinics…There must be thousands more out there killing themselves with this poison.’
Zaheen Ahmed, director of therapy at drug-addiction experts The UKAT Group, the UK’s largest provider of private addiction treatment services, says the withdrawal process from spice is ‘horrific, as bad as heroin’.
‘I’ve worked in drug services for over 20 years and seen countless people in prison unable to come off spice because the withdrawal process is so horrendous, with diarrhoea, sweating, tremors, body aches, unable to eat anything for days,’ he says. ‘How on earth a child is going to get through this, seeing these new statistics, it’s frightening.’
The UKAT Group – which only treats adults – has a dedicated spice addiction online help page, which has seen a 90 per cent rise in visits in the past three months.
Zaheen says he was recently asked to speak at a school in Braintree on the dangers of spice after three pupils were hospitalised.
‘I’ve done many similar talks to all age groups on all kinds of other drugs, but this is my first ever to schoolchildren on spice.’ he said. ‘I could see one pupil in the audience visibly going through what seemed to be withdrawals from spice, sweating, tremors, fidgeting uncontrollably.
‘This seems to be an issue affecting all demographics. Rich or poor, no parent should be in the slightest bit complacent that it won’t be their child rushed to hospital from school in an ambulance after the first few puffs on a spice vape.’
Zaheen says one problem with synthetic cannabinoids like spice is there is no way of knowing the strength – a puff on one spice vape could contain ‘10, 20, 50 times more than another vape’.
‘A bag of cannabis is, roughly speaking, going to be approximately the same strength as another, but made in a lab rather than by nature, you’re putting your life in the hands of a manufacturer who almost certainly has no pharmaceutical qualifications,’ he adds.
Zaheen’s solution? Ban vapes – especially in schools.
‘If vapes are sold, they need to be properly regulated by the government so we know exactly what’s in them – these things are potential death traps,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t put a syringe in your vein without knowing the liquid you’re pumping into your body.”
Fiona Spargo-Mabbs OBE, co-founded the Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation, in 2014 after losing her 16-year-old son Dan to ecstasy to educate teachers and schools about the dangers of recreational drugs.
She has been working closely with Professor Pudney to help teachers to spot the signs of spice use in schools.
‘The number of reports we’ve had of spice vapes in schools has more than doubled in the past year,’ she says. ‘Until very recently we didn’t even need to mention this in schools, but now it’s a real concern.
‘Teachers have to know what’s going on, and the worry is that this autumn so many schools will be affected by zombie kids on spice.
‘This isn’t just a passing fad. Spice is incredibly addictive, unpredictable and dangerous,’ she adds. ‘Unless we act quickly to educate and protect young people, more lives will be put at risk.’
It is a warning echoed by Connor Shannon, 29, from Barnstaple, who says his life was ruined by spice after he first tried it as a teenager.
‘I was 15 when I first smoked Spice,’ Connor recalls. ‘Back then it was sold openly in “legal high” shops – bright packets on shelves, labelled “not for human consumption” but with everyone knowing exactly what they were for.’
In Barnstaple, where Connor grew up, several of these ‘head shops’ operated until legal highs were made illegal in 2016. He says he remembers walking in wearing his school uniform, the logo still visible on his jumper, and being served.
The high was nothing glamorous, he says. ‘One drag and I’d slump forward, head dropping like I’d been paralysed.’
Like Emma, he hated it, yet couldn’t stop. As soon as the hit wore off, regret arrived, followed by cravings that woke him at night. Without spice he’d be violently sick, but when he did have it he was incapacitated, unable to function.
From 15 to 19, his life unravelled. Daily use led to lost jobs, lies to his family, stolen money. He dropped to seven and a half stone, ended up hospitalised with an enlarged spleen, skeletal and sleepless.
By 20, he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, locked in a psychiatric unit for months as psychosis took hold.
When he was discharged, he drifted into speed and cannabis, friendships shattered, trust eroded.
At 25, Connor hit rock bottom. Then, unexpectedly, came a turning point. One night, scrolling online, he stumbled across a running video online. The following Saturday, he showed up at his local Parkrun in battered walking trainers.
‘Running 5km nearly killed me,’ he admits, ‘but I loved it.’ For the first time in years, he had found a buzz that didn’t destroy him.
Four years later, Connor is clean, a marathon runner and triathlete. He founded Addicts to Athletes, a charity that has supported over a hundred people in recovery through fitness.
But he fears history is repeating itself. ‘A whole new wave of young people is starting down the same path as I did, only now through vapes,” he says. ‘Many believe they’re inhaling THC, harmless cannabis, when in fact they’re drawing in the same poison that nearly destroyed me.
‘I’ve seen what Spice does,’ he warns. ‘It robs you of your health, your mind, your family. If you’re young and someone offers you a vape, don’t assume it’s safe.’
