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New police video warns teenagers of legal highs

A new online video has been launched to educate Scottish teenagers about the dangers of legal high drugs.

The film is part of an interactive tool called ‘Choices for Life’, which has been created by Police Scotland’s Safer Communities team. The project works in collaboration with the Scottish government and Young Scot.

The interactive online video will be made available to all secondary schools in Scotland and is intended to form part of an awareness drive to educate students of the dangers associated with legal highs, also known as New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), as well as alcohol. Legal highs are freely available for sale in many shops, but are labelled as not being fit for human consumption. Viewers of the film will be able to choose how the narrative unfolds, being presented with a range of scenarios that all have different endings.

Detective Inspector Michael Miller commented: “It’s become clear that officers are spending an increasing amount of time dealing with the diverse issues brought on by new psychoactive substances as the trend to take them escalates. It horrifies me that young people willingly take a substance without knowing what it contains or the effects it will have. We’re aware that young people as young as 12, 13 and 14 are taking these substances, with some taking unwell and being hospitalised.”

Det. Insp. Miller emphasised that the term legal high is misleading; it infers that because the drugs are not illegal to purchase, they are therefore, safe to consume.

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