Editor’s note: This commentary is provided by the Medical Marijuana Education and Research Initiative (MMERI) of Florida A&M University.
The e-cigarette trend is raising alarms, especially among adolescents. Products disguised as everyday items make it easier to hide drug use and harder to prevent it.
“They now make vape pens that look like car key fobs that you can smoke out of,” says Bobby Betros, CEO of SwabTek, maker of drug-testing kits that can detect cannabis and other drugs in vaping devices and edibles.
Parents and more than 2,500 schools across the country use the drug testing kits that SwabTek devel-oped to determine if vape devices and suspicious-looking candies confiscated from students contain illicit drugs. The concern isn’t just nicotine, but also teens vaping cannabis.
“They’ve really latched onto vaping and then quickly discovered, ‘Oh, look, you can buy [vaping] cartridges that contain drugs,” Mr. Betros explains.
Adding to the risk is stronger THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, which is significantly more potent today than in the 1970s. Mr. Betros notes that modern products can contain anywhere from 30% to as much as 90% THC.
Frequent marijuana use in teens has been linked to memory loss, attention issues, and learning prob-lems. The legal marijuana market outside Florida has led to edibles and vape products reaching teens illegally.
“The last thing people want to do is arrest students. The goal is to identify people who need help…change the path that they’re on to not escalate into other, more serious drugs like ecstasy and cocaine,” he says.
Visit https://bit.ly/MMERIMay2025 to watch MMERI’s Conversations on Cannabis Virtual Forum featuring Bobby Betros, CEO of SwabTek, discuss “Hidden in Plain Sight: What You Need to Know About New Vaping Trends.”
