Legal high deaths nearly double in a year
THE growing danger of “legal highs” has been underlined by new figures showing the number of drug deaths in which the substances were present has doubled in one year.
While the overall number of drug-related deaths in Scotland fell by 9 per cent in 2013, there were 113 where “new psychoactive substances” (NPS) – commonly known as legal highs – were involved, up from 47 in 2012.
Of those, pathologists were able to “implicate” legal highs as having possibly contributed to 60 deaths, up from 32 the previous year. However, there were only five cases where NPS were the only substances implicated in the death.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad