Lincoln set to become first city to ban legal highs

Talks are underway amongst city officials in Lincoln to discuss the possibility of banning legal highs drugs from its city centre.

Legal highs are freely available for people to buy in Lincoln’s city centre and health officials have voiced their concerns over the harmful effect they are having on those who use them. Luke Crosbie was one such user.

Mr Crosbie began taking legal highs because they made him feel good and he knew he was not breaking any laws; however, his occasional use of the legal high called Clockwork Orange soon became a daily occurrence and his life began to suffer. The drugs made him forgetful and ill, and he sometimes became violent. This resulted in him losing a roof over his head and the intervention of his family to help him to kick his drug habit.

Now weaned off the drugs, Mr Crosbie is urging others not to try legal highs. He explained: “The feeling is good at first, but about a third of the way through you just feel dead. And the taste of it is horrible. If you have one spliff you’re out for about an hour and then when you start to come back around you have a headache and feel a bit nauseous, but then it hits you like a brick wall and you feel really ill for about two hours.”

If the policy scrutiny committee accepts the proposed plan, Lincoln could have a legal high ban by April 2015.