On a bright spring afternoon in Warwickshire, a BBC investigative team sat in a parked car, their nerves taut as they waited for a suspected drug dealer. The rendezvous wasn’t for a typical sting operation—it was to expose a troubling trend sweeping across England: the sale of vape liquids laced with the synthetic drug spice, marketed as THC, to unsuspecting teenagers via social media platforms like Snapchat.
According to the BBC, the operation began after concerned mothers reported their daughters’ sudden addictions to what they believed were THC vapes. These girls, only 13 years old when they started, experienced severe withdrawal symptoms and episodes so intense that one mother feared she’d find her child dead in bed. The teens described feeling like they were “dying” during withdrawal, and the mothers’ pleas to authorities seemed to fall on deaf ears. Despite reporting the issue to police a year earlier, the dealers continued their operations, undeterred.
Armed with this information, the BBC team went undercover. They contacted a dealer through Snapchat, whose account, tellingly labeled “new account, old one banned,” advertised brightly colored vape liquids at £10 for a “special mixed flavour” and £20 for “pure concentrated THC,” with delivery offered across Birmingham and Warwickshire. The process was disturbingly casual—no names exchanged, just a brief check to ensure the buyer wasn’t police, followed by a swift transaction near a children’s playground in a leafy suburb.
The undercover reporter, posing as a schoolgirl, handed over cash and received four bottles—one turquoise blue, the others clear. Independent laboratory tests later confirmed what the team feared: the bottles contained spice, not THC. The dealer, when contacted again by the BBC, promptly blocked the reporters and did not reply.
This local investigation dovetails with a broader, alarming trend revealed by a recent University of Bath study. Between June and August 2025, researchers analyzed 1,923 e-cigarettes and e-liquids confiscated from 114 secondary schools across seven regions in England. Their findings were stark: 13% of all samples contained spice, and in hotspots like London and Lancashire, the figure soared to around 25%. Only 1.2% of the confiscated vapes actually contained THC, despite many being sold as such.
Professor Chris Pudney, who led the University of Bath research, told the Press Association, “Spice e-liquids are trivially available on social media like TikTok and Instagram, with apparent drug dealing on these platforms. A simple search of social media platforms brings up hundreds of accounts selling this material, making them incredibly easy for young people to find.”
The research team also conducted a digital sweep, tracking 120 TikTok and 83 Instagram accounts over three months that claimed to sell THC vapes. The younger the user demographic on each platform, the higher the likelihood that the vape liquids contained spice—68% of TikTok accounts and over 50% of Instagram accounts were actually pushing spice, compared to just 12% on Facebook. Professor Pudney added, “Young people think they’re buying a cannabis product but instead they’re being pushed a highly addictive, cheap drug with unpredictable and serious health effects, such as psychosis, seizures, and heart problems.”
Despite alerting social media companies to these accounts through the Drugs on Social Media working group in March 2025, researchers say that as of September 1, about 70% of the identified accounts remained easily accessible. “The response of these platforms appears insufficient to tackle this urgent issue,” Professor Pudney stated. Fiona Spargo-Mabbs, chair of the working group and founder of the Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation, echoed these concerns: “As we start another academic year, we’re very concerned that we’re going to see increased use—and increased harm from the use—of spice by teenagers, as a result of the ongoing visibility of vapes being sold as THC on their social media platforms.”
Social media giants have responded defensively. Snapchat told the BBC that using its platform to buy or sell vapes and illegal drugs is strictly against its rules, claiming it removed more than 2.4 million drug-related posts and disabled 516,000 related accounts in the previous year. “We use technologies to proactively find and shut down dealers’ accounts, block search results for a wide range of drug-related terms and support law enforcement efforts,” a spokesperson said. TikTok and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) also maintain that their policies prohibit the promotion and sale of vaping products and illegal drugs.
Yet, the University of Bath’s findings suggest these measures are not enough. The report calls for Ofcom, the UK’s media and communications regulator, to open a dedicated enforcement program under the Online Safety Act. The Act requires social media platforms to assess and mitigate the risk of illegal drug sales, with Ofcom empowered to issue fines of up to £18 million or 10% of a company’s global annual revenue for non-compliance. A spokesperson for Ofcom said, “We’re holding companies to account—we’ve already launched investigations into 47 sites and apps, and expect to announce more in the coming months. It’s also important this happens alongside effective action from law enforcement against individuals selling illegal drugs online.”
The UK Government, too, has weighed in. A spokesperson emphasized ongoing efforts to tackle youth vaping, referencing the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which aims to prevent vapes from being marketed to children, and reiterating the “crystal clear” legal obligation for tech companies to remove illegal drug sales content. “Tech companies must stop looking away—safeguarding our children is not optional, it’s a legal obligation,” the spokesperson said.
The human cost, however, is perhaps most powerfully expressed by those directly affected. One mother, Dawn, told the BBC, “This stuff’s dangerous... for adults and it’s highly dangerous for children. Adults who are making money out of this are absolute scum. They should be locked up with the key thrown away.” Both teenage girls featured in the BBC investigation have since stopped vaping illegal drugs, but the trauma of their experience—and the ease with which they accessed these substances—serves as a stark warning.
As the new school year begins, the combined evidence from undercover journalism and academic research paints a clear picture: the sale of spice-laced vapes to teenagers is a rapidly growing problem, enabled by the reach and anonymity of social media. While tech companies and regulators debate responsibilities and enforcement, parents, educators, and public health officials are left grappling with the very real dangers facing young people today.
