RockNess drug death: Caution urged on ‘knee-jerk ban on legal high’

SCOTTISH drug campaigners have said policy makers should avoid a “knee jerk” reaction by banning the legal drug Benzo Fury, which is thought to have been involved in the death of a festival-goer at the weekend.

Nineteen-year-old Alex Heriot, from Portobello in Edinburgh, died after collapsing on Saturday night after apparently taking Benzo Fury, a “legal high”, at the RockNess festival near Inverness.

Two other revellers, a 19-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man treated in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness after allegedly taking legal highs, were discharged after treatment on Sunday night. The woman is believed to have been Mr Heriot’s girlfriend.

In a statement, Mr Heriot’s family said: “Alex was attending a music festival which he had been looking forward to enormously. As a young man who enjoyed life it was unfortunate he chose to experiment with a drug that had such a catastrophic effect on his system.

“We are devastated that we have lost him but anything he did, in every area of his life, was done with good intent, in this case to get the most out of his festival experience.”

Responsibility for drug regulation lies with Westminster, but two years ago an outcry over the legal high drug Mephedrone, linked to 52 deaths in the UK, led to it being banned.

John Arthur, director of Edinburgh-based drugs agency Crew 2000 said that drug policy makers needed to “keep their heads” because banning legal highs meant users moved to other readily available substances.

He said: “We need to keep our head and wait and see how widely Benzo Fury is being used. Benzo Fury and Mephedrone are a product of us banning other things. That shows we’re not going to get anywhere by banning substances, and instead should be educating people.

“Policy makers acted with the best of intentions. They were besides themselves over what to do and were dealing with anger from constituents. But putting a ban in place is counter-productive because people will move on to something else.”

MSPs Joe FitzPatrick and Brian Adam, who were involved in getting Mephedrone banned, said more information was needed on Benzo Fury.

Mr FitzPatrick, MSP for Dundee City West, who previously raised with the Scottish Government the dangers of “legal highs” after five people were hospitalised in Dundee in one weekend in November 2009 after using Mephedrone, said: “We led the call for banning the Mephedrones or ‘bubbles’ two years ago, but the problem is that it takes time to become aware of new forms of these mind-altering substances and it is only after fatal incidents that we can act.

“Education is key, and we need to raise awareness of the fatal and near-fatal consequences of people taking dangerous substances whose contents they do not know.”

Mr Adam, MSP for Aberdeen Donside, said: “Making an instant judgement on banning something is not necessarily the best approach. We need to gather evidence before moving on to anything else.”

David Liddell, director of Scottish Drugs Forum, said: “It’s very, very difficult for the authorities to deal with what is, essentially, a moving target. The law will always be a blunt instrument so education, information and awareness-raising in the long term will be key to reducing drug use and related harm.”