Sheryll Murray
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Legal Highs
Sheryll Murray Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) on securing this important debate. I am seriously concerned about so-called legal highs—as the hon. Gentleman said, their proper title is new psychoactive substances—which are not covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 because, according to some, they have not been well enough researched to legislate over. That does not allay my fears that those substances are at best dangerous and at worst fatal.
At a town in my constituency on Sunday 22 June, four teenagers aged between 17 and 19 had to be treated by the emergency services for the effects of a legal high. One boy became so violent towards paramedics who were trying to help him that the police had no choice but to taser him. The emergency services considered the situation to be so critical that the four boys were rushed to Derriford hospital in Plymouth under police escort so that they could get the treatment they needed. At least one of the boys was reportedly classed as being in a life-threatening condition and would have died had he not received the treatment he was given at the hospital. Because of the expert care given at Derriford hospital, all four boys made a recovery, but the outcome could have been so very different and tragic.
The products we are discussing are marketed as bath salts or plant food because they cannot be sold for human consumption, but people who seek to get high on such products know which are actually plant foods and which are merely sold as such. If that information is in the public domain, surely we can identify such products and restrict or ban them. When they are tested, it is not uncommon to find that they contain substances that are banned under the 1971 Act, which are not always listed in the contents. I appreciate that the Government cannot stop individuals using substances in a manner for which they are not necessarily marketed, but surely it is within our ability to legislate to restrict or even ban the sale of such products. I urge the Minister to seek ways to end the ready availability of legal-high substances to prevent any more people from being killed or injured, as so nearly happened in my constituency on 22 June.