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The e-cigarette trend is setting off alarm bells as some products are marketed to help users conceal drug use, raising challenges to preventing substance abuse among a demographic that has gravitated toward vaping — adolescents.
“They now make vape pens that look like car key fobs you can smoke out of,” says Bobby Betros, CEO of SwabTek, the maker of drug-testing kits that can detect cannabis and other drugs in vaping devices and edibles. “They can look like pens, Magic Markers, even ChapStick containers. So now you have the challenge of first identifying whether something is a vape pen—before you can even figure out if it’s for drugs or not.”
Teens vaping flavored, nicotine-infused aerosols have raised public health concerns, but Mr. Betros believes cannabis vaping poses even greater risks. “They've really latched onto vaping,” Betros explains, “and quickly discovered, ‘Oh, look, you can buy cartridges that contain drugs, and nobody will know I’m smoking drugs because it’s just a vape pen.’ And that’s the real problem.”
Potency is another concern, as today’s marijuana is much stronger than it was in the 1970s—back then, it was about 4–5%, but now some products are as high as 70–90%, making it unsafe for teens to use.
Frequent marijuana use in youth can impair memory, learning, and decision-making. SwabTek’s kit, used in over 2,500 schools, helps determine if vape juices or suspicious candies contain illicit drugs.
“The last thing people want to do is arrest students. The goal is to identify people who need help and identify people who you want to try to educate and change the path that they're on to not escalate into other, more serious drugs like ecstasy and cocaine,” he says.
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