Legal high campaigner warns about “Russian roulette”

An anti-drugs campaigner from Tayside has claimed that the practice of injecting legal high drugs has become more of a problem than heroin use.

The Rev Martin Fair, who assists at the Havilah drug addiction centre in Arbroath, claims that users of the class A drug heroin are now injecting the legal drugs known as new (or novel) psychoactive substances (NPS). The result is that these drug users are now in a more desperate state than they were before.

The Rev Fair explained: “People are using them because of the accessibility of them ‒ the fact you can just walk in off the street and buy them. We have seen people who have been using heroin for a long period of time and then started using legal highs, and they end up in a worse state mentally and physically, which really perturbs us. It’s a real Russian roulette with injecting legal highs because you have no idea what it’s doing to your body.”

Despite the shops that sell legal high drugs in Angus being the subject of scrutiny by the group Arbroath Against Legal High Drugs, they are still open and legally trading the dangerous substances. A spokesman for the group, Derek Wann, agreed with Mr Fair that the legal high problem in the area is getting worse.

Earlier in 2014 NHS Tayside began a public survey in the local area in an attempt to find out more about legal high use and people’s experiences when using these drugs.