Don’t miss our week-long series focusing on one of Jerseys biggest social problems, legal highs, in the JEP this week
Nearly £200,000 worth of ‘legal highs’ were seized by Customs last year – a total of 65 packages, which were all sent through the post.
States analyst Nick Hubbard, along with his team, is responsible for analysing what chemicals are in substances when they come into the Island.
He told the JEP that the drugs scene had changed massively over the past five years because of a shift to ‘legal highs’.
States police Detective Inspector Craig Jackson, who has in the past said he has known drug dealers to cut NPS with brick dust that can cause blood to congeal in users’ veins if injected, said that those involved in selling ‘legal highs’ on the Island’s streets will use practically anything to bulk up substances to increase profits.
Evidence from across Britain and Jersey shows that when NPS, which can be bought online for £10 a gram, are sold on the streets they have been cut with everything from brick dust, dried dog excrement and sugar to rat poison, talcum powder, crushed glass, benzocaine (a mild anaesthetic) and powdered caffeine.
Today, in the third part of a four-day series investigating the dangers of ‘legal highs’, the JEP looks at how law enforcement officers work to stop the drugs coming to the Island and bring to justice those who disobey the law.
