Addiction charities are reporting a sharp rise in the number of young people who say they are worried about their use of ketamine.
Addaction, one of the UK's largest charities helping people with drug problems, says it has seen a 68% increase in the last year in the number of inquiries from teenagers using ketamine, up from 151 to 254.
The charity believes a surge in the drug's popularity is down to people switching from mephedrone after it was made illegal in April last year. Laurie Yearley, who works with young people at an Addaction clinic in Buckinghamshire, said that last year he was seeing two or three people a week using ketamine as a "secondary drug". He is now seeing six or seven a week for whom it is their main drug.
"People started using ketamine because it was cheap, but then they went on to mephedrone, which was legal," Yearley said. "But when mephedrone was made illegal they went back to ketamine because they said it was like a milder form of mephedrone, which has pretty harsh side effects."
Yearley said price was a major reason for ketamine's popularity. "It can cost as little as £6 a gram. If you split it between four people, that's less than a pint. Because it's class C – less than cannabis – there's a feeling among young people that it can't be that bad."
But Yearley said he was concerned that heavy ketamine users were trebling or even quadrupling their intake in barely a week to achieve the same effects. "A lot of youngsters are snorting the drug because they think they are down there with the big boys who are doing coke. Part of it is an image thing. But if you start using it a bit on Monday and on Tuesday, your tolerance disappears quickly and by Thursday you need to spend £10 to get the same effect and the following week it's £20."
An anaesthetic that was used in Vietnam to sedate wounded troops, ketamine is still used to anaesthetise children. It is also used in veterinary circles as a horse anaesthetic.
The drug is also a hallucinogen with users drawn to its "disassociative effects". Many claim it can give them a feeling of being detached from their bodies. But as it is an anaesthetic, experts warn it is dangerous when mixed with depressants, such as alcohol, combining to slow or shut down the central nervous system.
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