Call for Coordinated Action

Once vaping becomes embedded in campus culture, intervention becomes exponentially more difficult and expensive.

- MR BEN CHESTER CHEONG, a law academic at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.

The scale of this crisis demands coordinated deployment across all educational institutions. We should not wait for each school to individually discover they have a problem.

While some secondary schools have been using metal detectors to randomly check students for e-vaporisers, there are other technologies to combat Kpod abuse. A local company has recently brought in a rapid test kit — similar to a Covid-19 test kit — to detect etomidate, which is found in Kpods or vapes laced with synthetic drugs.

All you need to do is to swipe a piece of test paper provided in the kit onto the surface or nozzle of a vape. The test paper is put into a solution, which is then dripped onto a test indicator.

Results are obtained within five minutes. The company also has a test kit to detect etomidate in a person's urine.