In most places, spice users are shorthanded as “zombies” – a term used on that Mirror front page, that chimes with popular stereotypes of drug users down the ages(witness the famous Certainly, on Facebook and YouTube, phone-videos of spice “zombies” form a grim genre: a nasty, contemptuous kind of entertainment, in which self-evident suffering is there to be giggled at. It’s strong. Over the summer, stories of the drug and its users seemed to reach a critical point – in Spice and the problems it creates have been growing for around four years, Woven through such stories are problems spread across a whole host of policy areas, which all highlight the increasingly inescapable sense that Britain cannot go on like this.
This time he hit his head on the concrete, and the hideous crack it made was enough to bring people to his aid, before he seemed to assure them that he would be all right, and uncertainly shuffled away again.‘The collapse of people’s lives has ceased to be merely metaphorical: scores of them are falling to the floor every day, in front of our eyes.’ The stuff you get in the bags is dead strong and he just snorted it. Fourteen arrests have been made in the city centre, since the act came into effect, for supply and possession with intent to supply offences.“We are also exploring the full range of tools and powers available to us to tackle this issue, including Criminal Behaviour Orders, which have been used to good effect under Operation Mandera in tackling cannabis supply in Piccadilly Gardens.”Julie Boyle, who sees the effects of Spice every day at Lifeshare, now testifies on behalf of victims whenever a Spice dealer is prosecuted.Her statement is officially presented before courts as a demonstration of what the drug can do, warning them this is ‘a problem of epidemic proportions that has never been seen before’.“The grip it’s got on the homeless population is far worse than any drug I’ve seen around… ever,” she says.Daniel, the former Spice user in his early 20s, is just as brutal.“Every Spice-head knows they are dying off it,” he says.“But they can’t help it. He cannot remember anything about what happened when he was on it.Like Julie and Craig, 17-year-old Liam has also seen someone die while on Spice.“I’d just be sat there on my own, just slumped, unable to do anything.“My mate died in a car park. Now the crack and smack dealers are just dealing Spice as well as Class As round the clock.“That’s not because the chemicals themselves are stronger but because manufacturers are mixing different strains together.”Jonathan Billings, who runs the Wellspring homeless charity in Stockport, agrees the only difference made by the ban is rising prices. There’s nothing else they can do.Julie says she first heard ‘whispers’ about Spice around three years ago, ‘but then it just exploded’.She says kids end up in the most dangerous situations imaginable either while on the drug or thanks to their desperation for it. You can’t tell a pothead it’s legal weed - obviously he’s going to smoke it. found through the Freedom of Information Act that police call-outs to incidents involving Spice or similar drugs had rocketed 13-fold in two years. A third involved children and many featured frightening levels of violence or threats of suicide.As those warnings grew louder - fuelled by rising use of the drug in prisons - the government brought in a ban last April.However Manchester academic Robert Ralphs, who has been researching legal highs for several years, says little has changed since Spice was outlawed.Prior to their ban last year, he found that between 90pc and 100pc of the legal highs being sold in the city’s head shops were Spice ‘or some other name for the same thing’.Researchers suspected the new law would simply drive sales underground.“Immediately after the ban, these predictions proved true with street sellers setting up close to previous shop outlets and around city centre areas such as Piccadilly Gardens, around Manchester Cathedral and Urbis,” says Ralphs, senior criminologist at Manchester Metropolitan University.“The market has simply switched to the streets.
At the same time, those who become addicted quickly turn into a new class of untouchables: variously pitied and mocked, but too rarely understood.The Conservatives are gathering this weekend in Birmingham, another place where people are regularly seen chasing spice’s grim oblivion, and the summer brought news of seven deaths said to be linked to the drug.
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