So many new drugs on offer it's like a 'sweet shop' for users, says professor.
Three Scots are dying every month because of so-called “legal highs”, according to new figures. A total of 36 people died in Scotland in 2012 after taking legal drugs that are also known as “party pills”. This represents a rise of 300 per cent on the 12 people who are reported to have died in Scotland from legal highs in 2010. The deaths from legal highs were among nearly 500 drug deaths recorded in Scotland in 2012. It also emerged that the cost of prescribing methadone in community pharmacies rose last year by nearly £4 million to £22.4 million.
Legal high drugs are usually psychoactive substances, often labelled and sold as plant food or bath salts, or marked as not fit for human consumption to get round the law. They are generally sold through the internet but are sometimes also sold at petrol stations, newsagents and takeaways. Drug policy for the whole of the UK is controlled by Westminster but both the UK and Scottish Governments have insisted they are committed to tackling legal highs. Ministers have already moved to ban some of the more dangerous drugs, only for drug barons to replace one banned substance with another legal one. Professor Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, warned that there were now so many of the new drugs available it was like a “sweet shop” for users.
