Opinion | Why banning ‘space oil’ isn’t enough to save Hong Kong’s youth
We need to think beyond bans and crackdowns. With creativity, empathy and urgency, young people can be guided towards a healthier future
With slow, deliberate breaths from their vapes, they chase a fleeting high: a peculiar blend of exhilaration and suffocation, like binge-drinking in a room with no air. For a brief moment, they feel weightless, untethered, like astronauts adrift.
It’s commendable that authorities are quickly banning new variants, but playing regulatory whack-a-mole without understanding the root causes of the problem is putting the cart before the horse.
So what is driving the city’s youth to inhale this noxious concoction? And more importantly, how can we stop it? To tackle the problem, we first need to understand the psychology behind its appeal.
