Banning Legal Highs…will it work?
With the abolition of legal highs, we should see a reduction in these stories. Indeed, with a natural product, users can be relatively confident of their effects and purity.
When carrying out testing on the drugs we find using dogs, we are seeing a huge disparity in the quality and content of the drugs. Without legalising and controlling the drugs that people are going to take anyway, this battle is lost. Whether the producers are cutting the product to the point of no effect or increasing their purity to establish a reputation, the uncertainty when the ‘customer’ ingests the product is dangerous and unnecessary.
Other key issues remain. Will banning all legal highs have any effect? Will it drive the industry further underground, leading to more deaths and hospitalisations? Where on earth are the government obtaining the statistics that the war on drugs is starting to turn?
Our view is that only when you control, prescribe and therefore monitor drugs will you really impact on peoples health and wellbeing.”
Hospital admissions for synthetic cannabis use have increased by a third, a worldwide drugs survey has found, while “super dose” ecstasy pills are hospitalising drug takers in increasing numbers, and users inhaling nitrous oxide are suffering numbness and shooting pains for weeks afterwards. Legal highs, like Spice, which have resulted in scores of users being hospitalised across the UK, were “more likely to leave people needing emergency medical treatment” than any other drug, the Global Drug Survey 2015 found.
