Singapore's Vaping Crisis Lays Bare the Drug Addiction Nightmare for Parents

Helplessness grips families watching loved ones slip away before their eyes.

- Mubin Saadat

There has been an outpouring of emotions in recent days. But also, in a strange way, a palpable relief that the silence has finally been broken.

Parents, having watched their children held captive by drug-laced vapes for weeks, months, or even years, are speaking louder.

Since The Straits Times launched its anti-vaping campaign with a series of reports, analysis, and commentaries, the newsdesk inbox has felt like a channel of catharsis. Anxiety, fear, grief—it's all there.

People have been writing in, raw and rattled, describing how their children or spouses have spiraled into addiction to vapes and Kpods.

ST Forum letters demand action, and suggestions have not been in short supply.

For all our years guarding against drugs, we now face a hard truth—our laws are still catching up, and enforcement hasn't matched the scale of the vaping crisis.

Experts have been blunt about the need for "legal agility"—a government that can pivot as fast as the products do. It's a conversation we should have had earlier.

Progress seems underway. Laws are being tightened. The Health Sciences Authority (HSA) has extended hotline hours, launched a reporting portal, and is looking at AI tools to chase the problem where it lives—online.

As a father, I take some comfort in that, but it's the uneasy kind, laced with a sense that the problem could still get bigger.

THE SHEER HELPLESSNESS

The stories shared by affected parents are vivid.

They speak of desperation and despair. Relationships where trust has frayed and the heartbreak too heavy to hold within.

A single mother wrote about her sense of helplessness as her teenage daughter was sinking deeper into addiction.

A wife shared that she watched her husband turn from a doting dad into a violent individual after he became addicted to vapes.