Shocking scale of legal high problem revealed
PARAMEDICS are rushing to six potentially-deadly legalhigh emergencies every day.
A shocking investigation has revealed soaring numbers of ambulance call-outs to stricken users of the highly poisonous chemicals which can be bought online or over the counter for just a few pounds.
The number of 999 calls to Scotland’s beleaguered ambulance service has shot up in the past seven years from just 150 to 2,229 – a rise of nearly 1,400%.
The disturbing figures were revealed in response to a Freedom of Information act request for a BBC documentary.
Toxicologist Dr James Dear told the programme makers legal highs now account for a fifth of all admissions to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary’s poisons unit, about 40 a month.
“Most of the patients, typically, are agitated,” he said.
“It’s not uncommon for them to come in with the police – with two, three, four policemen – needing to be held down, needing to be sedated because they’re so unwell.”
The expose – fronted by investigative journalist Sam Poling – details the alarming extent of the multimillion pound international legalhigh industry.
Undercover reporters tracked their manufacture across the globe to shops in Scotland willing to break the law by selling legal highs marketed as incense.
It is illegal to sell them for human consumption. But Sam said: “We went into about a dozen shops and made it clear to them that we were going to take the legal highs. All of them sold them to us.”
At one shop, This N That in Perth, a reporter bought a small amount of synthetic cannabis known as “Spice” for just £10.
It can be up to 100 times stronger than the illegal drug it is supposed to mimic and is known to have caused seizures, psychosis, kidney failure and strokes.
The team also spoke to bereaved parents and filmed addicts, including one man who injects into his groin twice a day for a buzz lasting just five minutes.
“It was horrific,” said Sam. “His breathing changed, his face changed colour and all the veins in his face and neck stood out.”
Professor James Ferguson, Consultant Surgeon in Emergency Medicine at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, said tests showed soaring enzyme levels after people had taken them. The greater the damage to a body’s muscles, the higher the enzyme levels.
Normal levels are up to 300. The patient would need intensive care if the level rose above 5,000.
The UK government is set to ban items “capable of producing a psychoactive effect” under the Psychoactive Substances Bill.
On Wednesday, Community Safety Minister Paul Wheelhouse said deaths where “new psychoactive substances” were found rose from four in 2009 to 114 in the last year.
Student Alex Heriot, 19, from Edinburgh collapsed and died at the RockNess festival in 2012 after taking Benzo Fury.
BBC Scotland Investigates: the Deadly World of Legal Highs, tomorrow, 9pm, BBC One Scotland.