A north police chief has warned of the deadly dangers of so-called legal highs as he revealed that more people in the Highlands were being caught with the drugs.
Chief Superintendent Julian Innes said yesterday a rising number of stop-and-searches in the region – mainly in Inverness – were uncovering people carrying the potentially fatal substances.
Mr Innes said: “We are seeing less controlled substances in the stop-and-searches on the street.
“Though it is too early to nail down the figures, the seizures we are having around legal highs indicated that it is an emerging theme in this area, across the Highlands.”
He said many people taking legal highs thought they would have no adverse medical effects but, in some cases, these could be severe and put life at risk.
Mr Innes added: “We find in some instances they are not legal and, for others, taking them has harmful effects on the individual. We’ve had some instances where people have gone completely out of control and started acting in a way that is extreme and out of character.
“The emergency services have had to control them. There have been a couple in the Highlands that could have been fatalities but the individuals involved have now recovered.”
Dr Margaret Somerville, chairwoman of the Highland Alcohol and Drug Partnership, said the use of the substances was increasing across the north.
She said: “The expression legal highs somehow leads people to thinking that these substances are safe.
“In fact, we do not know what is in many of them and therefore cannot say whether they are safe.
“Furthermore, the people who buy them, often through the internet, can have no guarantee what is in them or what their effects can be, both physically and psychologically.