Thinktank’s recommendations on legal highs backed by charity

Recommendations made earlier this week by a thinktank for introducing legislation on legal highs have received the backing of a charity.

The Angelus Foundation was set up by the mother of a medical student, Hester Stewart, who died in 2009, aged just 21, after taking the liquid legal high GBL. A representative for the charity said the current penalties for shops that knowingly supply legal highs are too low and backed the recommendations made by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) suggesting that such shops should be closed down and the owners banned from starting up again.

Jeremy Sare from the Angelus Foundation said: “Some shops in the UK have sold substances which have caused deaths and they have not responded in any way – what other business would continue to sell a substance which has killed somebody? Some of these are very powerful drugs – a 16-year-old trying one can have an extremely distressing experience which sits with them for a very long time.”

The recommendations by the CSJ suggest following Irish legislation, which in 2010 gave the police the authority to close down shops selling psychoactive drugs. UK shops get around existing legislation by marketing the drugs as plant food, bath salts, and air fresheners.

The minister for crime prevention, Norman Baker, has claimed that he is waiting for the Home Office to offer a response to his drug review suggesting how to tackle the increasing use of legal highs, arguing that people tend to think such drugs are safe and respectable because they are legal.