The growing threat to students

The Angelus Foundation, a charity dedicated to combating legal highs, has carried out a snapshot survey of freshers, which found that 19 per cent admitted to taking a legal high. It also found that more than a third (36 per cent) had been offered a legal high and three out five (61 per cent) had a friend who had taken one.

Angelus has been engaging with students at Freshers’ Fairs, showing information films and raising awareness of the harm and unpredictability of substances such as Clockwork Orange, Pink Panther and AMT.

Last year, there were 81 new legal psychoactive substances identified across European Union countries. The UN Office and Drugs and Crime estimates the numbers of young people in the UK who have taken a legal high as 670,000 – making us the highest consumers in Europe.

While such substances can be purchased legally in shops, at festivals and online, they can be just as dangerous as Class A substances. As well as loss of life, they can cause heart attacks, strokes, organ damage from overheating, psychosis, paranoia and deep depression.

Angelus contributed to the soon-to-be-published Home Office review on restricting the supply of legal highs and disseminating public information around their physical and mental health risks.

Maryon Stewart, who founded the charity after losing her daughter to legal high use, said: “There is no group more vulnerable to exposure to legal highs than students. Naturally, many take the opportunity to try new experiences and our survey shows one in four have already taken a legal high; their prevalence appears to be rife. This revelation will be deeply worrying to many parents.

“These substances can have highly unpredictable effects and are marketed with little regard for the serious damage they may inflict. Young people and parents alike should arm themselves with information on these dangerous substances.

“It could easily prevent further needless deaths and preserve the mental well-being of young people in the wider world.”

Legal highs have become an increasing problem in recent years, with manufacturers mimicking the effects of illegal drugs such as ecstasy.

“Each time a drug is outlawed drug-makers, often based in the Far East, tweak the formula and put it back on the market.”

Deaths linked to legal highs could surpass those related to heroin within two years, according to a recent report by the Centre for Social Justice. The report called for more to be done to combat the drugs, known as New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), including closing ‘head shops’ which sell such substances.

Legal highs were linked to 97 deaths nationally in 2012 and hospital admissions rose by 56 per cent between 2009-12, according to CSJ data.

Bradford drug treatment charity the Bridge Project has dealt with a rise in legal high abuse in recent years. This summer the charity re-designed its Adult Service and Stimulant Service, extending treatment and recovery programmes for new groups of addicts. Kristin Rothert, head of clinical standards and quality at Bridge, said legal highs are widely available over the internet, and in some shops. She said commonly-used substances include ‘Black Mamba’ and ‘Annihilation’.

Ms Rothert called for the UK to follow the lead of countries which have banned the sale of legal highs.

“I fully support the CSJ’s recommendation to close ‘head shops’, in fact I’d go further – New Zealand has imposed an outright ban on the sale of NPS and I think this is the approach we should be adopting,” she said.

“It makes no sense that there’s a unregulated trade in dangerous drugs linked to increasing numbers of young people’s deaths and at the moment it’s completely legal in our country.”

According to the website of the long-running anti-drugs campaign Talk to Frank: “Legal highs that are actually legal contain one or more chemical substances which produce similar effects to illegal drugs (like cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy). These new substances are not yet controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and there is often not enough research about them to know about their potency and adverse effects from human consumption. “However, more and more ‘legal highs’ are being researched to see what their dangers are and to see whether they should be made illegal. In fact, many substances that have been found in substances sold as legal highs have already been made illegal.”