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Legal highs flooding Tayside streets

A selection of  legal highs.
A selection of legal highs.

Police seized 17 different types of potentially deadly legal highs in Tayside in just three months.

A report by NHS Tayside published today revealed that drugs with names such as Clockwork Orange, Olympic Legacy, Mr White and even Cake were confiscated between May and July this year.

It also reveals there has been a staggering rise in the number of incidents attended by paramedics where so-called legal highs have been involved.

In the first seven months of 2014, paramedics were called out to 130 incidents in Tayside involving legal highs. This is 14% of all the 915 call-outs involving new psychoactive substances across Scotland during that time.

The figures are even more horrifying when compared to just two years ago.

In the first six months of 2012 there were just three reports involving patients where legal highs were mentioned. In the first six months of this year that had risen to 106, although the NHS Tayside report stresses this may just be because people are more aware of the issue.

The report warns that the term “legal high” itself may be damage as it can suggest to some users that these substances are safe. Instead it suggests the term New Psychoactive Substances, or NPS, should be used.

It recommends teaching schoolchildren specifically about the dangers of legal highs and calls for a ban on these substances being sold through high street “head shops”.

NHS Tayside also surveyed 687 people about legal highs. The results showed the most common age to being experimenting with the drugs is between 16 and 19.

Public Health Consultant Lucy Denvir said: “The use of New Psychoactive Substances is a rapidly growing issue.

“The term ‘legal high’ is misleading and implies a level of safety and legality that is not present with these substances. Buyers of NPS cannot be certain of the actual content of the products sold and the advice is clearly not to use these substances.”