Paraquat remains the number one choice for teenagers who want to end their lives, and its use is being promoted on social media, says Brown Girl Woke director Maluseu Doris Tulifau.

Maluseu claimed children were taking their lives by drinking the hazardous chemical and expressing their suicidal tendencies on the social media platform Tik Tok.

"So many kids are putting it on Tik Tok. They are sharing sad stories of other Samoan kids drinking the poison," she said.

The B.G.W. director said she was saddened by the increase in the number of children taking their lives, and wanted to raise awareness on issues affecting children that is driving them towards depression and eventually suicide. 

Mele Mauala, an advocate on the banning of paraquat in Samoa, said the use of weed killer in suicides is a sad fact and there are global statistics which point to its use. 

"It is very sad, and paraquat is actually a common way to commit suicide and there are global statistics which suggest it," she said.

She said the Samoa Government should now seriously consider banning the herbicide. 

In neighbouring Fiji, a ban on the use of paraquat went into effect from 2020. It was done in recognition of the negative effects of pesticides on human health and the environment. Before its ban, paraquat was the second most commonly used means of suicide, involving 117 cases which accounted for 21 per cent of total suicide cases and 27 per cent of attempted suicides with 144 cases in total reported in Fiji from 2014-2018. 

Globally an estimated 20 per million people die from drinking paraquat according to the World Health Organisation. 

Samoa has yet to ban paraquat as the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is collating data and information before making a decision on its total ban. 

According to Johanna Coyle, another advocate for the ban on paraquat, said in a recent public forum that the regulation of how the paraquat is received by buyers were not strictly monitored for safety so therein is another issue of how paraquat gets into the wrong hands.

Coyle had also highlighted the unsafe use of the weed killer in villages where people sprayed the chemical without protective gear and with children playing nearby.