Drug addicts are putting their lives in danger by injecting “legal highs” as an alternative to heroin, a drugs worker has warned.
Dave Barrie, project manager at the Dundee branch of drugs agency Addaction, says the alarming practice has sprung up over the past two or three years as mind-bending legal substances have become more popular.
Mr Barrie says the dangers of “shooting up” legal highs include addicts not knowing what they are injecting into their bodies, or how potent they are, in addition to contracting infections.
His comments were echoed by the proprietor of a shop that sells legal highs, who says addicts are playing “Russian roulette” by experimenting with injecting them.
The revelation was highlighted at Dundee Sheriff Court on Monday after a former heroin addict was arrested for attempting to “shoot up” a legal substance called Lotus, committing a breach of the peace in a communal close in the city.
Police were called after residents became alarmed at the behaviour of Fife man Robert Hardie King, 44, within the common close at 1-23 Leith Walk, Menzieshill, on Sunday.
Depute fiscal Douglas Wiseman said police went to the tenement block and found King on the landing holding a syringe and saw he was in the throes of injecting himself.
When asked by police he handed over the syringe and he was arrested and taken to police HQ.
Solicitor Paul Parker Smith told the court King, of Haughfield Terrace, Kettlebridge, was a former heroin addict who had been weaned off the class A drug through a methodone programme.
He said: “This particular drug was a legal high called Lotus, which is purchasable over the counter in a certain shop in a certain shopping centre in Dundee.
“He says having tried it now, he will not be trying it again.
“Mr King says he was about to inject himself and, when the police asked him to hand over the needle, he did so.”
King admitted he behaved in a disorderly manner likely to cause fear and alarm by using a hypodermic syringe and needle, attempted to inject himself with a solution which appeared to contain blood and committed a breach of the peace, while on bail.
Sheriff Alastair Brown called for reports and deferred sentence on King until April 4.
Mr Barrie said: “Injecting any drug carries a significant health risk and obviously, injecting legal highs is even more risky because you don’t know what is in it.
“People are injecting legal highs as they mimic other drugs but that is extremely dangerous as it carries the risk of infection or overdose or contracting septicaemia or causing blood clots.
“Legal highs have been around in Dundee for two to three years now and we have seen a relatively small but consistent group of people having problems with them some of whom are injecting.”
Mr Barrie pointed out even snorting or taking these drugs orally can cause extreme harm, both mentally and physically.
He added: “There is a false understanding that because they are legal they are safe.”
Scott Campbell of Essentials in Dundee’s Keiller Centre, which stocks a variety of “legal highs”, said while he did not stock Lotus or know what it contains, he is aware of it.
He described it as a research chemical powder he had seen in a catalogue he orders from but said injecting the chemical was like “playing Russian roulette”.
He said: “People are taking their life in their hands doing something like that.”