Young 'using legal highs to avoid low-quality cocaine on streets'

The number of 18 to 24-year-olds being treated for addiction in 2009-10 fell sharply for every drug except cannabis as young people turned away from class A drugs, the NHS’s National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) said.

But it warned there was “evidence that legal highs have emerged as an alternative to low-quality cocaine”.

The NTA drug treatment report said: “Despite this apparent step away from the most harmful street drugs, there is some evidence of a corresponding move towards new synthetic compounds (sometimes known as legal highs) such as mephedrone.

“The nature of the legal highs market means that new substances are continually emerging, bringing with them renewed concerns about their actual chemical composition and the potential harmful effects.

“Treatment data suggests few people so far have needed help for these new drugs. It could take some time for those using legal highs to develop problems that would call for formal treatment.

“So it’s too early to tell if there is an emerging treatment need, although reports from A&E units suggest these new drugs do cause significant harm.”

The team leader for Lifeline Redcar and Cleveland, Peter Kelsey, whose group aims to relieve poverty, sickness and distress among drug addicts, said: “People hear the word legal and they think safe. Yet it’s anything but.

“We’re seeing a big rise in people coming to us because of legal highs, which we think may be down to the poor quality and price of coke and the legal aspect.

“Cocaine has been around for literally thousands of years. We know what it does and how to treat people.

“But with legal highs there have been lots of reports of different side-effects like people committing suicide or becoming paranoid because of mephedrone binges. It’s new so we are still trying to establish the best way to deal with it.”

He added: “People come to us because we are a stimulant service. Many of them never thought they had a problem before but their experiences with legal highs have scared them.”

Mephedrone – also known as Meow, Bubbles and M-Cat – was banned and made a class B drug in April after it was linked to the deaths of two teenagers, Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19. Toxicology reports later showed the pair had not taken the drug.

The Home Office has announced plans for year-long bans that could be put in place to take new drugs off the market while a comprehensive review of the potential harm is carried out.

Yesterday’s figures from the NTA also showed that cannabis users accounted for 29 per cent of all new treatment cases aged under 25 in 2009-10, up from 18 per cent (nearly 3,300), four years previously.

But the number of young adults being treated for heroin and/or crack, at 7,427, was down almost 40 per cent from 12,320 in 2005-06 – a fall from 67 per cent to 49 per cent of all new cases in this age group.

In its report, the NTA said that, as the purity of cocaine and crack seized has declined markedly in recent years, “it would come as little surprise if users turned their backs on a low-quality product”.

Cocaine and crack addiction fell sharply for the first time in 2009-10, the NTA figures showed.

Previously, cocaine use had risen steadily every year since 2005, but the number of users seeking treatment fell substantially last year, down more than 14 per cent to 7,304 from 8,522 in 2008-09.

Crack use, which had also been on the rise since 2005, also fell.