An outright ban on legal highs should be included in the next Queen’s Speech to avert the growing number of deaths and increasing harm linked to psychoactive substances, councils leaders said today.

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents more than 400 councils across England and Wales, wants the Home Office to follow legislation introduced in Ireland more than four years ago, which bans the sale of all psychoactive drugs but exempts alcohol and tobacco.

Cllr Ann Lucas OBE, Chair of the LGA’s Safer and Stronger Communities Board, said:

“Council trading standards teams have performed an excellent job of tackling the issue but the current legislation is not fit for purpose. We need an outright ban on legal highs that will enable the closure of head shops and protect the public from devastating consequences.

“Legal highs are untested, unpredictable and a potential death sentence. Nobody can be sure of their contents or the effects that they could have. At the moment, as soon as one is outlawed, another one with a slightly different chemical composition appears. We can’t allow this to continue.”

With councils having overall responsibility for public health and spending around £830 million on drug and alcohol misuse many are working in partnership with local police forces to tackle legal highs. For example:

• Recently City of Lincoln Council became the first local authority in the country to ban people from publicly taking legal highs in the city centre. Within the first month, action was taken against 81 people under the ban, which also prohibits the drinking of alcohol. Portsmouth City Council is expected to announce a similar ban shortly.
• Kent County Council and Medway Council Trading Standards teams, supported by Kent Police, seized 424 samples of legal highs from 20 head shops, leading to the suspended sale of a further 1,443. They used the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 and subsequently obtained forfeiture orders for all products, allowing them to be destroyed.
• More than 900 packs of untested drugs have been seized by Nottinghamshire County Council Trading Standards team in the last 12 months with labels such as ‘Herbal Haze’, ‘Pandora’s Box’ and ‘Happy Joker’.
• Blackpool Council has recently issued Community Protection Notices to all shops prohibiting them from selling psychoactive substances. If ignored, they face prosecution but so far all have complied with the order.
• Newcastle City Council has re-commissioned drug and alcohol services to include legal highs. The council has used new powers under anti-social behaviour legislation and existing licensing legislation to tackle the sales and community impacts of legal highs, revoking the licence of a takeaway and forcing an off-licence to refrain from selling legal highs. The council has also targeted campaigns across universities and re-designed the drug and alcohol system to ensure a comprehensive response.

Notes:

1) What are legal highs? Legal highs contain one or more chemical substances which produce similar effects to illegal drugs. http://www.talktofrank.com/drug/legal-highs

2) How many use them? Drug misuse findings from the 2013/14 Crime Survey for England and Wales: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335989/drug_misuse_201314.pdf

3) In Ireland, the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010 makes it an offence to sell a psychoactive substance knowing or being reckless as to whether it is being acquired or supplied for human consumption. It also places the burden of proof ‘on balance of probabilities’, thereby making it easier to prove. http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2010/en/act/pub/0022/index.html