Schools step up checks to tackle vaping but face challenges

It is harder to detect than smoking and students are finding ways to share devices

- Elisha Tushara

During the June holidays, primary school teacher Wong (not her real name) saw one of her Primary 5 boys vaping openly while cycling near their school.

"It was very disturbing," she said. Since the start of 2025, her school has caught about five pupils—mostly from the upper primary levels—with e-vaporizers. One pupil has been caught vaping in school so far.

Some children this young are getting their hands on the devices from channels such as Telegram, Ms Wong said, while others obtain them from their siblings in secondary school.

Teachers both in primary and secondary schools told The Sunday Times they are seeing more students sneaking around with vapes—which can be disassembled and easily concealed—on school grounds.

Vaping is harder to detect than smoking, which has more telltale signs, they added.

The problem has become more prevalent since 2021, the teachers said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ms Wong said her school has planned and conducted training sessions for staff on how to handle pupils caught vaping.

"A lot of teachers are unaware to what extent this is happening, so we even have to show them samples of how these (vapes) might look, as some are very harmless-looking," she said.

In 2024, there were 2,000 cases of students—including those from institutes of higher learning—reported for possessing or using e-vaporizers. This is up from 800 cases in 2022, and 900 cases in 2023.

The numbers had risen due to a ramp-up of enforcement efforts by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA), which is the enforcement agency for vaping-related offences, and the Ministry of Education (MOE).

But teachers said more cases probably go undetected as teenagers are finding ways to vape more discreetly or to share the devices with friends by passing them around.