‘Legal highs a bigger threat than cocaine’

SO-CALLED “legal highs” are a bigger threat to society than traditional illegal drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy – despite a blanket ban on the substances, an expert has said.

An estimated 1,000 different legal highs, originally created as “legal” substitutes for illicit drugs, were now in circulation, said Professor Colin Davidson.

Perversely, the explosion in numbers of the drugs to hit the street was linked to earlier piecemeal attempts to outlaw them, he explained.

This only resulted in larger numbers of more varied drugs being manufactured as the arms race between suppliers and the anti-drug authorities escalated.

“By banning them, we’ve created a monster,” Prof Davidson said at the British Science Festival. He estimated that despite the ban, legal highs could still be obtained from the internet and one in 10 young people in the UK was taking the drugs. One in 20 was using them to such an extent they were likely to suffer long-term health problems.

The research found that Meow Meow, a form of amphetamine, caused neurotoxicity – while the ecstasy-like drug Benzofury was likely to damage heart valves over time.

Taking the legal high ketamine for three months led to a risk of bladder incontinence. But for Prof Davidson, the most harmful legal highs were those mimicking cannabis, such as spice and K2. He said: “These drugs are 10 to 100 times more powerful than cannabis. The chances are that people who take these drugs will develop schizophrenia.”