Are legal highs to become more deadly than heroin?

A new study suggests that legal highs may cause more deaths than heroin within the next two years.

Research carried out by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), which is due to be published later this week, calls for government to take more action to combat these new drugs, which are also known as new psychoactive substances (NPS). Some legal highs, such as meow meow and Benzo Fury, have already been made illegal, but many more are still freely available and new drugs are continually entering the market.

Over the last two years legal highs have been linked to 97 deaths, with the number of users being admitted to hospital rising by 56% over the period 2009-2012. If this trend continues, the CSJ believes that deaths caused by legal highs will overtake those caused by heroin use, which are currently estimated at 400 every year. The report also appeals to the government to levy a ‘treatment tax’ upon alcohol sales to fund rehabilitation centres and treatment for drug addicts.

Christian Guy, director of CSJ, said: “Addiction rips into families, makes communities less safe and entrenches poverty. For years full recovery has been the preserve of the wealthy ‒ closed off to the poorest people and to those with problems who need to rely on a public system. We want to break this injustice wide open.”

Recent figures show that 1.6 million people in England are alcohol- or drug-dependent, costing the UK £21bn and £15bn respectively.