Youngsters still take ‘legal highs’ despite fears
MORE than 160,000 young people took a “legal high” last year despite growing health concerns about the content of the drugs, official Home Office figures revealed today.
The statistics, from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, show around two thirds of the young drug takers, aged 16 to 24, took a “herbal smoking mixture”. Others took pills, liquids or other undefined substances.
Each of the drugs — designed to mimic the effects of illegal substances such as cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine — has now been banned under the Government’s Psychoactive Substances Act, which came into effect in May.
The level of consumption comes despite a succession of deaths and warnings about other potential damage to health caused by substances such as “Spice” , “meow meow” and “black mamba”, the precise content of which is usually unknown to users.
Today’s findings come in a report on drug use in the 12 months up to the end of March this year. It concludes that around 244,000 people, aged 16 to 59, took a “new pyschoactive substance” — the official name for the former legal highs — during that period. Of these, two thirds were aged under 24.
The statistics also reveal that young men were nearly three times as likely as young women to take a legal high, with 113,00 males aged 16 to 24 using one of the drugs.
Unsurprisingly, those in nightclubs or pubs were more likely to take a legal high. Today’s findings also show there is a “particularly strong association” between drinking alcohol and taking a psychoactive substance.
More than four out of five of legal high users also admitted taking another drug too —despite official warnings about the dangers of “poly-drug” use, particularly with alcohol.
Other figures in today’s report show overall drug use is stable with 2.7 million people in England and Wales — equivalent to 1 in 12 adults — taking an illicit substance in the past year. Cannabis, used by 2.1 million people, remains the most commonly used drug, followed by powder cocaine with 725,000 users. This was up on last year, but below the 2008 peak for cocaine.