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The Battle Against Legal Highs

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Legal highs - they're the drugs that have been causing havoc

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for nearly a decade.

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-Police! Police!

-Police!

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People thought because they were so-called legal highs as opposed

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to the dangerous substances that they were,

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that it was legitimate to take them.

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Linked to 204 deaths in 2015...

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It was only, like, a 10% chance of survival.

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They thought she'd be brain damaged.

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..they've devastated life after life.

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I started dabbling in it and then I ended up hooked on it

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and then I lost everything.

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Death comes to mind when I hear the word "legal high".

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Britain has the largest legal-highs market of any country in Europe.

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In May last year, the government passed a law banning them,

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hoping to stop a problem that was getting out of control.

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Jack's been identified via CCTV

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and suspected of dealing and selling new psychoactive substances.

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But is it working?

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We spent six months in one of the UK's worst-hit areas to find out.

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'I'm in Newcastle, where they've had a real problem

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'with what used to be known as legal highs.

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'The North East of England has the highest death rate from drugs

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'in the country.'

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Tell me what you know about legal highs.

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From powders to pills to stuff you smoke,

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there are 640 varieties of legal highs globally.

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They're officially known as novel psychoactive substances,

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and mimic the effects of traditional illegal drugs,

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such as cocaine and cannabis.

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They can be stronger, a lot cheaper, and sometimes more dangerous.

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So, this is Northumberland High Street, which is obviously

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our main shopping area.

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What we began to get is complaints from shop owners and businesses,

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saying that they were being affected

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by the state that people were in,

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who were under the influence of lethal highs.

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Early last year, the city experienced the worst problems

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with novel psychoactive substances - now known as NPS.

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Individuals were seen being sick in the streets, haemorrhaging,

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actually having blood from their ears and nose,

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they were having seizures and fits.

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To try to deal with the problems of people collapsing

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in the city centre, the police, council and ambulance service

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in Newcastle got together to form a taskforce.

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At the height of the NPS use, there was large congregations,

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some of them really vulnerable young people,

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who would hang around this area into the late evenings,

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also dealing in NPS products in this area.

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There used to be a lot of legal-high users that used to

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bother the old people, the children, myself.

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What are your views on legal highs?

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What, mine? Don't take them because they're bad for you.

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They kill you.

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And have you seen people under the influence of legal highs?

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-Aye, I have.

-What have they been like?

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They've been lying on the floor, or been lying on the benches.

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You know what I mean?

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-They just lie there and they don't talk or nowt to you.

-Mm-hm.

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And you just think, "What's wrong with you?"

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They'd come over to you with a really drowsy look on their face

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and you couldn't understand a word they were saying.

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It's horrible!

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Nationally, until May last year, you could buy legal highs

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across the counter in some shops and newsagents.

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But before that, Newcastle was already closing these shops down.

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I remember smoking it

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and...

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I remember having three draws of it,

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and I remember waking up four hours later on my bed

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and then thinking, "Yeah, that's good.

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"That makes me forget about all my problems."

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Paul is 30 and is in and out of homelessness.

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He's been addicted to legal highs for several years.

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I was getting recognition and reward points for the top salesman.

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I had a nice house,

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the most beautiful girlfriend ever.

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I had a scooter.

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I had everything I could have ever hoped for.

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12 months later,

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I've lost everything.

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250...

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300.

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Is it like heroin, mate, where all your money goes on that?

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30, 40, 50, 60, 70...

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380 quid's worth.

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Would all your money get spent on that?

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Not all of it,

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but a high portion of it, yeah.

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So there's not much difference between that

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and heroin addiction, really, is there?

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Other than I would be more desperate for that

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-than I would be for heroin.

-Yeah?

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Yeah.

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But the difference is, I wouldn't set about somebody for heroin.

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I would set about them for that.

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You're not a violent person, are you?

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-You know that.

-Yeah.

-But when I'm going through withdrawal

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and I'm not myself,

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and my brain's not right because of the psychological effects

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of legal high...

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You know.

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This was where I used to stay when I was homeless,

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normally off to the side, over here, in bushes,

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in a little tent somewhere.

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At 18, Chantelle became homeless and started taking legal highs.

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They blocked everything out.

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They just made you feel like you had four walls around you

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and forget about your surroundings, where you were,

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forget about everything that I was going through.

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I ended up doing shopliftings and doing crime and that

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and stuff I'd never, ever even dreamt of doing before,

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and then that's when I realised I didn't want it no more.

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But once hooked, it's a hard habit to break.

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The Psychoactive Substances Act was introduced in May 2016.

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It banned the manufacture, supply and sale of legal highs

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across the UK.

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What the act did was got rid of the semi-legitimate

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sales of these items,

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both on the internet and on head shops,

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so they're no longer freely available in that way.

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Armed with these new powers, Northumbria Police is targeting

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dealers selling what they've nicknamed "lethal highs"

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on the streets of Newcastle.

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Over the next two days, we're looking to arrest and disrupt

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those concerned in the supply of NPS

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under the Psychoactive Substances of Act 2016.

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So this is the address here.

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If you look, there's a side door,

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and that's where we're looking to hit.

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And basically we're going to be looking for any evidence

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that relates to the sale of NPS, so any mobile phones,

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any laptops with any correspondence on,

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any packets of NPS, and so on.

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OK, folks.

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I don't need to remind you of the dangers of lethal highs.

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You've seen yourselves the immediate effects on users,

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the effects on our city centre and the community we serve.

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We're going with two vans this morning.

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Obviously, we've got a warrant to enter the premises.

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And it's all about getting to the premises quite early

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and securing the premises.

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Police!

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-Police!

-Police!

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-We've a warrant to search these premises, OK?

-Police!

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The police found the man they were looking for and took him

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to a cell at Forth Banks police station to be questioned later.

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The next day, the police intercepted a parcel

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of legal highs at the house.

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What we've got here

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are approximately 120 bags of lethal highs

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which were delivered, funnily enough, to the property

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this morning whilst officers were still there.

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Street value of those is probably, I don't know, maybe £1,500,

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something like that. They pay approx £3, £4 a bag,

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and they sell them on for about £12 to £15,

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so about three times the money paid out.

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A lot of them are imported from China,

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but these have come from within the UK.

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Fingers crossed, we'll be able to locate the source of this

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and then, as I say, it just moves up the chain and keeps going

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until we can find the one at the top.

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How do people get it? Who are they getting it from?

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How much does it cost you now?

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With the shops closed down, deals are now taking place

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on the streets.

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You can clearly see him,

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he's got about six or seven lethal high sachets in his hand,

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and they're all just queuing up with their coins in their hand.

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Sergeant Percival and his team are tracking a street dealer.

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This is the guy we're going to do the warrant on?

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It's him, yeah.

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Clearly dealing, like?

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-Clearly supplying.

-Yeah.

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The suspect, Jack Lockhart,

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is seen dealing around the city centre.

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The team heads out to try and arrest him.

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On arrest, police found cash, legal highs and several mobile phones.

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Mm-hm.

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What, sorry?

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Mr Lockhart is charged with six counts of supplying,

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and under the new Act could face up to seven years in prison.

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His will be the first novel psychoactive substances case

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Northumbria Police take to court,

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and one of the first such cases nationally.

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Paul's visiting Mick, a drugs support worker at Lifeline,

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an organisation that aims to help people with drug addictions,

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and a partner in the taskforce.

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Getting better, getting there. Day by day.

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As the types of legal highs are always changing,

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Paul gives Mick his empty packets, so he can keep up to date

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with the most popular ones.

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And if I just show you the back of the packets, it says,

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"Harmful if swallowed, causes serious eye irritation,

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"skin irritation or respiratory irritation."

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It actually warns you to call your poison clinic.

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Death comes to mind when I hear the word "legal high",

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because pretty much all my friends have died

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through smoking legal high.

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At the peak of legal high use in Newcastle,

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there were hundreds of calls to the ambulance service,

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as people collapsed in the city centre.

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Since the Act, the numbers have fallen

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but some faces are very familiar.

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It's only early evening

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and we're already aware of two patients around the department

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who are here with legal highs.

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You just get a feel here for how regularly we see people.

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So this is just the attendances in the last few months,

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and all, we know, related to legal highs.

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This patient has been back to A&E time and time again.

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The paramedics tend to bring in the packet if they find it.

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In effect, it doesn't help us a lot,

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because we still don't know what the chemicals are,

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but we can spot trends.

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Currently, this one seems to be more sedative,

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in that we're not experiencing any problems, you know,

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he's quite settled, he's quite sedated, quite sleepy.

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People who use synthetic cannabis like Spice are 30 times more likely

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to go to A&E than cannabis users.

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But in terms of deaths, heroin kills far more people.

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Again, just a legal high.

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Looks like someone who isn't known to us.

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We're going to get a feel for what's going on, see how he is.

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I think there's no great concerns,

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apart from the fact that he's slightly sleepy.

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So plans. What are we going to do with him?

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Give him a bit of fluid. Blood pressure is tiny bit on the low side

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-and then just keep an eye on him.

-OK.

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With NPS, it's almost a revolving door, that we see people,

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we attempt to impact, but we really get very little opportunity.

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My personal experience is that, really, once they're recovering,

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they just want to be out the door.

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When I go into A&E, they do all the standard tests,

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but they just put me on a drip

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and they just know.

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It's a case of, "We'll flush you out and send you out

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"and see you tomorrow or next week

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"when you come back in in an ambulance."

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Over half a million young people aged 15 to 24 have experimented

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with these types of drugs at least once.

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Deaths linked to legal highs have tripled in recent years,

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and it's mostly young people who are being affected.

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'I've come to meet Sharon, who lives in Morecambe.

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'The North West has the second-highest rate

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'of drugs-related deaths in the country.'

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What do you do for fun around here?

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There's nothing really to do round here.

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I don't know, it's quite deserted, and nothing really much to do.

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'A year ago, at the age of 15,

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'Sharon had a nightmare of an experience with legal highs.'

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How would you describe yourself?

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Well, now I'm a better person.

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I'm more... Well, wiser and more grown-up.

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I used to be a bit of an idiot.

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I'd take drugs and think it were funny.

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What type of drugs?

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Cannabis the most.

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I wouldn't want to do more than that, but legal highs came out

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and then everyone else started taking them.

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She went to a party and that night was given a joint.

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After I smoked a lot of it, I started to feel not like myself

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and it just sent me loopy.

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It's like someone's squeezing you.

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It's like a suffocating sensation, but you can breathe fine,

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but you're panicking because you don't know exactly

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what's going on in your body.

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Sharon came home the following evening earlier than expected.

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For her mum, Cheryl, it's something she'll never forget.

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Told her to be in for ten o'clock, but she was in at half past eight.

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Gone straight up to her bed, which isn't like Sharon,

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but I thought, "Oh, she must be knackered from the night before.

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"I wonder what she's done."

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I was running home.

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I can't remember why I was running, but I can feel my face

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going like that...and my head started going into the pavement.

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The pavement felt like it was that far away from my head

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and I was sinking, like that,

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and I was running and I am going down and down, like that.

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I ran up the stairs, because I knew if my mum saw me like this,

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I was going to get absolutely shouted at and get into trouble,

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so I ran upstairs and went to bed.

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What did you feel like when you were lying in bed?

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Literally, I could feel my heart slowing down.

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I could feel it all through my body,

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my heartbeat's going, "Boomph, boomph, boomph, boomph."

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I've gone and sat downstairs with my mum and dad

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and an almighty thud hit.

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Luckily for me, she'd fallen out of bed.

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If she had not fallen out of bed, she would be dead.

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What did you think was happening at that point?

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At first, I thought she were messing about, until I saw her face

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and I was screaming, "What have you taken?"

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And she couldn't even slur two words together.

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We laid her out on the floor while we waited

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for the doctors to arrive, and the ambulance,

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and she just stopped, she stopped moving, stopped breathing.

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-What did you think was happening?

-I thought she was dead.

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-Sorry.

-That's OK.

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My little baby was sat there dying.

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There was blood coming out of her mouth.

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She just stopped.

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Sharon was rushed to hospital with her mum,

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where doctors battled to save her life.

8:27:018:27:04

All I could hear was the machine where they restart your heart going,

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because her heart had stopped.

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They got it going again and then it stopped again.

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They fought for her that night.

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And it...

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No mum should have to see what I saw that night.

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What did the doctors say when she got to the hospital?

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It was only like a 10% chance of survival.

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They thought she'd be brain-damaged.

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They told me to get the family and prepare for the worst,

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because they didn't think she'd pull through.

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Cheryl was eventually able to see her daughter just before

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she was taken up to intensive care.

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I went round the corner to see her,

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hooked up to all these different things,

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and they informed me that this tube in her mouth

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was breathing for her, cos she couldn't breathe.

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She wasn't there, it wasn't my baby.

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Why are you so upset now, looking at this?

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Because I can't believe, just looking at that...

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I didn't see that side of the story.

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And it's over something so stupid and so little.

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Does it make you think about your family and how

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they had to deal with it?

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I just feel really guilty,

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because...the one thing I smoked,

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I caused so much harm to myself and to my family.

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How long was she in a coma for?

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Two days, three hours and 45 minutes.

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Can you remember waking up in hospital?

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Erm...

8:28:428:28:44

Kind of.

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I remember having all these tubes coming out my mouth

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and things all over my arms,

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and all my family stood around me crying.

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I was like, "What's going on here?"

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What did you want to say to her here?

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As bad as it is, I wanted to hit her.

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I wanted to smack her for being so stupid.

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And then your heart breaks, because that's your baby.

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And I'd have to go home and tell her little brother

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that big sister wasn't coming home any more.

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In Newcastle, people who work with addicts can often be confused

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about how best to help them, because of the sheer range of legal highs.

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We've gone back to very simple messages saying,

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actually, as a workforce, you know the 90% of this,

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you know how to respond to drugs and their effects,

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so we need to do that in the same way.

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You don't necessarily need to know the compounds,

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the chemistry make-up, you just need to understand

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what the substance is mimicking and then treat.

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And give harm reduction advice accordingly.

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For users of these drugs, it's not just the effect

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that's being mimicked, it's also the withdrawal.

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The rattle...

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Forget about heroin, forget about Trainspotting,

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it doesn't have a patch on it.

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This was the most ruthless detox

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I have ever been through in my life.

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You're sick, your belly... twists up like a knot.

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And you're like...

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It goes in, so you're cramped over like that.

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And you're retching, you're retching, but you can't eat.

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If you want to be in a position

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where you've got...

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..fluids coming out your nose,

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fluids...coming out of every orifice

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in your body you could think of.

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It's like bile that you're bringing up, or phlegm.

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And then you've constantly... You've got diarrhoea,

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constantly on the toilet.

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Or the cold sweats.

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And I mean, you drip, you can see the drips,

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sweat dripping off you.

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It's horrible.

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You sweat like a waterfall.

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You get hot and cold flushes, you're fatigued.

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It just goes on and on and on

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as if it's never going to end.

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It takes a good few weeks to get off them,

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it doesn't take a couple of days. Like, people say...

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Like, the first three days, yeah, fair enough.

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But it's still hard after that. It is.

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Because you're always going to know you can get it.

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So, in your mind, you've got say, "No, I don't want that."

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You've got to be focused on it. You've got to be a strong person.

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It's September, and the police have some news about their NPS arrests.

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In particular, the street dealer Jack Lockhart.

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The updates we have so far is one male has been charged

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and is due in court.

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In the case involving the raid we saw earlier,

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the police are still waiting for the results to come back

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from the Home Office lab.

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The seized drugs were sent for testing, which has delayed the case.

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Without being able to prove the drugs are psychoactive,

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they can't move forward.

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That's taken some time, because this is quite new,

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so the government and the Home Office are currently

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going through the process of testing all the lethal highs that have been

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seized to say whether or not they're psychoactive as such.

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Our thoughts are that they will be,

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but we have to have that confirmed prior to any sort of charge.

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Determining whether something is psychoactive is a two-stage process.

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First of all, the substance has to be identified

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through the normal forensic providers

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and then the second stage is for scientists to say it's psychoactive.

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So, there is a delay, because they've then got to go

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through that second stage.

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However, the Home Office scientists

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have been working through the most commonly available substances.

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And if some new substance that's not been seen before

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in the UK materialises, then clearly that's got to go

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through the same process.

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However, some legal and scientific experts

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doubt that it will be possible to prove

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a new substance is psychoactive with lab tests alone.

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I have to make it clear I'm a lawyer not a scientist,

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but what I've been told by the scientific community -

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there is only one way to tell whether a drug compound

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is psychoactive in its effect or not,

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and that's by way of human clinical trials.

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One might be able to draw comparisons

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between the drug in question and like substances,

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but until the drug is actually consumed by an individual,

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it's actual effect will not be established.

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So, if a defendant pleads not guilty,

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will a lab-based test of psychoactivity in a new drug

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stand up to scrutiny in court?

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We asked the Home Office for an interview, but they refused.

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Instead, they told us...

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"The use of test-tube tests to show a substance is

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"capable of producing a psychoactive effect is in line with advice

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"from the government's independent experts,

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"the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs."

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Police Constable Joyce is off to court for Mr Lockhart's case.

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It's going to be a real sense of achievement, really.

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I think there's only been one or two other court cases in the country,

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so this is one of the first.

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So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the outcome is.

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The street dealer pleaded guilty to supplying NPS on five charges.

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But he won't be going to prison.

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The result from the court is that

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he's been given a 12-month community order,

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he's been ordered to do 40 hours of unpaid work,

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and he's also been sent on a rehabilitation course, as well.

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So I am slightly disappointed with that result.

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This is because me and my officers

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know the really lethal effects that NPS can have

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on individuals who take it and also on communities, as well.

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So for Jack to receive this sentence is a particularly disappointing

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one for us, after the work that has gone into it.

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Nationally, there have been nearly 500 arrests

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under the Psychoactive Substances Act,

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but only a handful of convictions -

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one of those being Mr Lockhart's.

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For Newcastle alone, more than 16 cases are backlogged in the system.

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And all because of this issue around proving

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whether a drug is actually psychoactive or not.

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This is an Act with so many areas of ambiguity and uncertainty,

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I've got no doubt it will throw up many issues,

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which will require clarification and examination by the courts.

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I take the view that the Act was passed in too much of a rush

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and it would have been better had the government just slowed down

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a little bit, taken stock of the situation

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and drafted a rather more coherent piece of legislation.

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12 months ago, Newcastle city centre was experiencing scenes like these.

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This is Newcastle's main shopping street and, as you can see,

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things have gotten a lot better.

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But, without a doubt, if you look hard enough,

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you'll still find users here and you'll see the same

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in other cities around the UK.

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And you're most likely to find them

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amongst the country's marginalised and homeless communities.

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Do you think it's got any harder for people to get it now?

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How often do you do it?

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