New kit to find drugs in vapes to be used in West Midlands after children collapse in schools
The kit has been created in response to students collapsing in school after vaping.
Last updated 9th Jun 2025
A university professor has created a vape testing kit that will be piloted by West Midlands Police in the hope of tackling the number of 'contaminated vapes'.
It comes after reports of children becoming unwell from contaminated vapes in the country.
What is a 'contaminated' vape?
The vapes causing students to collapse may have been laced with drugs such as Spice and THC.
Professor Christopher Pudney is behind the testing kit.
He does work within UK prisons, where synthetic drugs, like Spice, are endemic, but have recently been found to be contaminating vapes purchased by children.
He said: "The challenge is it comes soaked on sheets of paper. That's very hard to detect and so we developed a hand scanning device for detecting these drugs on paper."
Chris told us they are now adapting this technology: "We will be able to use that tool to actually understand what's actually in vapes found in schools."
He said working with Police has been very effective, allowing them test the kit in a way that works for them.
It's allowed schools and officers to work collaboratively to identify hotspot areas, with police able to respond quickly with the test kit, which is easy to carry around.
Chris said working with police rather than schools was an easy decision.
"No interest in criminalising young people"
He told us: "Every police force I've worked with throughout the country, has no interest in criminalising young people for these vapes.
"Their motivation is to find and identify young people who are at risk and put them in support services. I've seen that working really well."
There are hopes that they can add to the palate of dugs that can be detected, with Chris's team working hard to implement improvements requested by police using the equipment.
Chris said he hopes to secure a commercial partner to make the kits available for purchase.
"It can't fix that problem, but we hope it's part of that solution,"
In the meantime, the aim is to make them available on a regional level where they can be shared among forces.
He added that he's hopeful of the kit helping prevent children from coming into contact with substances like Spice, which has a high risk of a negative health outcome.
"It can't fix that problem, but we hope it's part of that solution," he said.