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By Shehzad Hameed Ahmad Early in our documentary, we feature an interview with a 24-year-old Filipino in Tarlac City who’d built a social media empire selling vapes to school children. It is eye-opening. Companies manufacturing these electronic devices have convinced young people, through a sophisticated marketing campaign, that vapes are a safer alternate to tobacco smoking. One survey estimates that 70% of Filipino youth believe this. We felt prompted to expose, through our investigations, how vapes are being laced with ketamine, etomidate, even liquid cocaine. Vapours of Death explores the devastating impact on young people across Malaysia, Thailand, the UK, the Philippines and Indonesia. |
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Filming with recovered vape addict Ahmad Haziq at Malaysia’s Rumah Sahabat Drug Rehabilitation Centre was challenging as he struggled to verbalise his thoughts – a reminder to the damage that eight years’ use of cannabis and THC-laced vapes can do.
Fighting drug-laced vape addiction is a painful, difficult and lonely journey which takes a staggering amount of resilience. Ahmad had to learn to live life again, and to rebuild the relationships he’d destroyed. It was disturbing to learn that many youths are abandoned by their families out of shame.
Such is the scale of addiction in Malaysia that Rumah Sahabat has hit full capacity.
In Indonesia, where users number in the millions, we delved into how drug addiction, vapes and the internet are interlinked. Parents fail to realise the threat social media and vapes pose to their school-going children.
In Thailand, a country-wide campaign to fight drug addiction among children involves police-led awareness campaigns in schools. Witnessing one of these sessions gave me hope. This push is a reversal of the country’s earlier drug liberalisation policies that caused significant damage to its youth.
If I were to sum up the message of this documentary, it is to educate our children early. Because once a child falls in the dark world of vape addiction, recovery is extremely painful, maybe even near impossible.
Shehzad Hameed Ahmad Producer & Director, Vapours of Death |