Wrexham,North Wales - Former legal highs ‘laced with heroin to get the users hooked’ in Wrexham

Published date: 31 May 2016 | 

Published by: Rory Sheehan
Read more articles by Rory Sheehan

LEGAL highs are being laced with heroin, leaving users like “the walking dead”, a councillor has said.

And they are so freely available that teenagers are getting hooked, Cllr Keith Gregory claims.

He said: “They are stumbling around like the walking dead. The town doesn't need this. I've spoken to some of the users and they are saying that legal highs are so easy to get hold of here.

“They are cutting them with heroin and it’s getting people addicted. These young kids are getting hooked, some of them are just 17. 

“Dealers will be making a fortune because you will be hooked and you will want it all the time. It’s black market stuff.”

Earlier this month, the Leader reported former care home Nant Silyn was attracting drug users and homeless people seeking refuge.

Last year Nant Silyn in Caia Park, which was run by Wrexham Council, closed its doors for the last time when the authority axed the home as part of budget cuts.

The building, now boarded up, has remained vacant.

But Cllr Gregory says the problem has now largely moved from Nant Silyn to near the Pigeon Loft fields on Benjamin Road.

He said: “The lofts are right next to a play area and the residents are going bonkers because it’s right outside peoples’ homes. It’s not just the people, it’s the mess that comes with it – the needles and the noise.”

Last week, a nationwide ban on the supply of the ‘legal highs’, also known as “New Psychotic Substances” (NPS), came into force and one Wrexham officer said he hopes the new law will help to tackle the wider issue of drugs and anti-social behaviour in Wrexham.

PC Lee Parker, community beat manager (CBM) for Wrexham town centre, said: “Obviously it’s been the same in Wrexham as in most towns, where there is an issue with NPS which has been problematic for the police, particularly due to the fact that they were previously legal.

“But with the new legislation, although it only bans the supply of these drugs, we do have powers to seize and destroy any of these substances which we believe fall into the category of Temporary Class Drugs.”

The blanket ban on previously legal highs now criminalises the production, distribution, sale and supply of the new psychoactive substances – or designer drugs which saw an explosion in popularity on the drug scene in around 2008 and 2009.

PC Parker added: “We do not know what’s in a lot of these substances and a lot of them have been found to have illegal drugs in them but now we have more powers to seize and destroy any substance we believe to be a Temporary Class Drug and we are going to try and enforce that more.”

He also said that police would be targeting known users of these substances in an attempt to seize any that they found.

The new legislation has been criticised by some, who believe it may result in the trade simply being pushed underground into the hands of criminal drug dealers or onto the so-called ‘dark web’ section of the internet.

He said: “People are always going to be able to get hold of these things on the internet, which I think is where most of them come from now. I do not think it will create a major issue.

“However it’s a big step towards tackling drugs in Wrexham. The issue also created a lot of anti-social behaviour and we are always looking to do anything we can to tackle that problem too.”

see-http://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/162648/former-legal-highs-laced-with-heroin-to-get-the-users-hooked-in-wrexham.aspx