Kuala lumpur: Parents and guardians are urged to be more vigilant about drug-laced vapes, which can be difficult to detect at home because some products are odourless or carry pleasant fruity scents and attractive names. University Malaya Centre of Addiction Sciences (UMCAS) Director Assoc Prof Dr Rusdi Abd Rashid expressed concerns that many vape liquids on the market are designed to emit pleasant fruity scents or no smell at all, while being marketed under attractive and playful names.
According to BERNAMA News Agency, Dr Rusdi highlighted that this lowers the guard of parents and guardians, allowing many young people, especially secondary school students, to become addicted without their families realizing it. "This type of vapes, most of the content, the liquid even got no smell at all. So it makes it difficult especially for the parents to detect whether, you know, these children are using all the substance," he stated during an appearance on The Nation programme aired on Bernama TV.
Dr Rusdi explained that secondary school students, particularly those in Form Three to Form Five, represent the most common age group admitted to hospital due to complications linked to synthetic substance use. He noted that drug-laced electronic cigarettes or vapes containing potent chemicals such as hallucinogenic mushrooms can disrupt a teenager's developing brain and trigger acute psychosis, including visual and auditory hallucinations.
He elaborated on the effects of the drugs, stating that mushrooms are hallucinogenic substances that can affect a child's brain and cause psychosis. Additionally, he warned about fentanyl, a highly potent opioid that can cause respiratory depression, excessive sedation, and respiratory arrest, resulting in the "zombie-like" condition seen in some users. "When people go into respiratory depression, they can stop breathing, their brain can become hypoxic because oxygen cannot reach the brain," he explained.
To manage addiction cases more effectively nationwide, Dr Rusdi recommended shifting the country's rehabilitation framework to a specialised healthcare model under the Ministry of Health, emphasizing that addiction should be treated as a medical illness. He argued that treating drug addiction as a medical issue could lead to better public health outcomes and make better use of existing spending.
Dr Rusdi noted that the government spends about RM580 million annually to maintain rehabilitation centres and prisons for drug users, who make up about 70 per cent of the prison population. He also urged schools and families to facilitate early medical intervention for affected youths.