Police reminder over '˜legal' highs

Police across the Fylde coast have issued a reminder over changes in law regarding so-called legal highs.
Legal highsLegal highs
Legal highs

Starting on Thursday, it will be illegal to sell or supply legal high drugs. This includes giving them away for free – even to friends – when they are going to be taken for their psychoactive effects.

Importing them from abroad will also be a crime.

Police have vowed to take action against people found selling or supplying the drugs.

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Punishments range from a formal warning to seven years in prison.

Police and other agencies also have new powers, meaning they will be able to stop and search people they think are supplying legal highs.

People found carrying legal highs will have the drugs confiscated and destroyed.

The new laws have been introduced in an attempt to minimise the use of psychoactive substances, which can be highly addictive and have negative consequences on people’s health and mental wellbeing.

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Effects are unpredictable because the substances used to create legal highs are untested, with each dose of the drug containing wildly-different contents. Even drugs that look similar or have similar names may be of varying strengths and have different effects.

Risks include paranoia, coma, seizures and, in rare cases, death.

Drugs that are already illegal, such as cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and a number of so-called legal highs that have already been controlled as class A, B or C drugs, are not affected by these changes to the law.

Police will continue taking action when they find these substances.

People who would like drug support or advice are asked to get in touch with online support service talktofrank.com.

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