Shop offers loyalty card to student legal high users

A high street shop where legal highs can be bought is offering a reward card to students.

The shop, UK Skunkworks, is offering customers with a student union card a 25% discount on their first purchase and a reward card, raising concern that young people are being encouraged to buy legal highs. The north London branch of UK Skunkworks is just 500 yards from the campus of London Metropolitan University.

The discounted offer and loyalty card marketing ploy has been called cynical and dangerous by anti-legal high campaigners. The 25% first-time discount means that legal highs with names such as El Blanco and Go Gaine are reduced from £25 to £19.25, while incense with a similar effect to cannabis and pills similar to ecstasy cost under £10.Anti-legal high charity Angelus Foundation issued a condemnation of the student discount. Its spokesman, Jeremy Sare, said: “These retailers have been allowed to pose as reputable businesses when, in truth, they are a shabby trade preying on people’s naivety and weaknesses. To offer discounts to students for legal but dangerous products is nothing short of disgraceful. There are plenty of examples of students succumbing to the effects of these substances, whether through overdose, depression or addiction.”

A survey carried out last month by Angelus Foundation discovered that one in five new university students admitted to taking a legal high drug.