Legal-high Annihilation puts 13 in hospital as police seize cache of pills

POLICE have revealed 13 people, including two teenage girls, have been hospitalised in the Strathclyde area after taking the potentially lethal legal high Annihilation.

Officers said they have also recently recovered a number of tablets that they believe to be 5-IT, a substance linked to several deaths in Europe.

Strathclyde Police would not say where or how many of the tablets were discovered, but that they gave “real cause for concern”.

Detective Sergeant Michael Miller said: “Rather than legal highs, we now tend to call them ‘psycho-active substances’. Another term is ‘research chemical’, and the clue is in the name as we don’t know everything about it and the scientists don’t know everything about it, either.

“Basically, they are created to mimic controlled drugs, whether cocaine or cannabis, by avoiding the chemical compounds detailed in anti-drug legislation, so they are constantly moving as the law changes.

“Because they are often sold in a packet, and you can get them in some shops and online, there is almost a legitimacy to them and people think they must be safe, even though it says ‘not for human consumption’ on them.

“There is a marketing strategy. They look the part and often have inferences to recreational drug use and packages with words like ‘party’. But they are not covered by the same safeguards as other sold items and the contents vary from packet to packet, so there can be all kinds of chemical combinations in them and they can have different effects on different people.”

5-IT can come in powder or tablet form and Mr Miller said it is made all over the world, but officers are not aware of it being manufactured in the Strathclyde force area at the moment.