Angus minister told of “phenomenal” risk from legal highs

A minister has been made aware of the “phenomenal” risk that users of legal high drugs are facing in Angus, Scotland. Local police officers informed the minister for community safety and legal affairs, Paul Wheelhouse, that an increasing number of legal high users are now injecting the drugs, which are also known as new psychoactive substances (NPS).

It has been claimed that long-term drug users have been shocked by the effect of legal high drugs that are injected rather than smoked can have on people. Injecting the drugs results in a far stronger effect and also renders them more addictive than some illegal drugs, such as cocaine or cannabis. Sergeant Nicky Forrester said: “We hear of users taking legal highs and saying: ‘Whoa ‒ the effects are nothing like anything we’ve had before.’ They are hardened drug users and [even] they are not equipped to deal with this. Yet there are young people not hardened by using drugs who are using legal highs. The risk is phenomenal.”

Sergeant Grace Morrison, who has spent some time working in her station’s custody area, told Mr Wheelhouse that of those individuals present who had admitted to using legal highs, 75% were now injecting them.

The minister had visited Angus on a fact-finding mission to discover how crime and public safety were being addressed by various agencies in the area. Mr Wheelhouse said that tackling the problem of legal highs was a priority for the Scottish government.