Scunthorpe raid discovers shock legal high ingredients

Raids on shops in Scunthorpe have revealed a few of the shocking ingredients that are being put into legal high drugs.

Dental gel, nail varnish remover and MSG were just some of the unsavoury ingredients found in legal highs being sold in shops throughout North Lincolnshire. The fire service has been working with staff from the Safer Neighbourhoods drug intervention team in the area, undertaking tests of the novel psychoactive substances (NPS) being sold in high street shops. They are using a computer database containing 30,000 different chemicals.

Legal highs with names such as Clockwork Orange and Magic Crystals have been tested. Whilst the majority of samples were seized from shops, others were taken from ‘drug safes’ located in local clubs and bars.

Tests carried out in America on the seized legal highs revealed some shocking ingredients. The Clockwork Orange legal high was found to contact synthetic leather and xanthan gum, which is used to thicken foods. The packets labelled Magic Crystals contained dental gel and caffeine. Other legal highs were found to contain substances that were once used to remove nail polish and glue, as well as MSG and cocaine hydrochloride.

Stewart Atkinson, the commissioning manager at Substance Misuse Adults, commented: “We had a lot of admissions into A&E and we are lucky no one has died. We had a lot of people in the intensive care unit.”

Testing of legal high drugs has been undertaken in response to the increasing number of deaths from drug poisoning in the past few years.