spice just hits you like a truck,it just knocks you out. whereas bud you just sit and chill. you know what? i wish i could go back to my bud. because you know what,spice, it's horrible. i woke up after the spice,with vomit all over my bed, and myself. i know a kid who died of it. couldn't get his heart beating more. it was beating too fast,it just went and shook out.
as the new government beganmaking moves to ban all legal highs, we headed to manchester,where synthetic drugs like spice, and other brands like vertex,pandora, and insane joker, are freely available to buy from newsagents and places known as head shops. although manufacturers state onthe packets that they're not fit for human consumption,legal highs are used recreationally. and they make the press whenstudents overdose on them. most people thought it wasa recreational drug, a party drug, something that you could,perhaps, dip in and out of.
but actually, nobody really knowswhat they're made of part and what structure they have andhow they impact on the body. although students with a supportnetwork tend to dip in and out of synthetic drugs. we wanted to meet a much morevulnerable group of people who can suffer from the affects ofa real dependency on legal highs. all the clients thatare presenting here are using spice. it's affecting the mental health,it's affecting the physical health, and it's a massive, massive problem.
manchester has more rough sleepersthen anywhere else outside of london. cuts to council services have left the city with 20% fewer emergencybeds than there were five years ago. and during that time, legal highs have become a crutch to manyof the people who now live on the streets. i use it myself, and i use it because it takes the pain away. it's legal. what can i do?
i can sit here now, there could be 20 officers aroundme with guns and everything. as long as pull a bag of spice out andstart rolling it, i can roll it. nothing that anybody can do. i pull a bag of weed out andthey'll all be on me like a car bonnet. how might people go about trying toget hold of it once you can't go to a shop and buy it? there's always gonnabe some match level drug. there's already street dealers out there.
are you worried though that itmight start criminalizing people? yes, yes i've seen some bad youhave got to look at this drug, it's bringing heroine addicts, i know aheroine addict that's a spice addict now. he takes spice like he used to takeheroine every single day of the week. he doesn't took to heroine now, so that heroine a class a drug andthe spice is bringing him off that. what is in this stuff? it's amazing. the misuse of drugs actcontrols substances on the basis of their structure.
the banned cannabinoid in weed is thc. synthetic cannabis like spice mimicsthe effects of weed by replicating and slightly altering the chemicalthat gets people high. legal high manufacturers designcannabinoids and constantly update the composition of their products,so that they remain within the law. but, these experiments can leavethe users smoking a legal version of weed that can be a hundred times stronger. one of the few volunteerorganizations that caters to manchester's homelesscommunity is lifeshare,
a charity that looks after young peopleseeking advice and accommodation. where i've just come fromis everywhere... it's everywhere... yeah, it's everywhere. people are making thousandsof pounds off that. in jail, yeah. and trust me i've seensome kids in wheelchairs. it's funny, yeah, but afterwards it's not. so more people just die. pretty much most of ourclients use the spice.
i think the main reason that it'sbeing used quite a lot, is it's cheap. people that used to smoke cannabis,they're spending ten pound on cannabis. and they're getting two smokes out of it. they're spending fivepound on a gram of spice. and it's going a lot further andit's a lot stronger as well, i believe. what i've noticed when it comesto manchester is the number of rough sleepers there are. most of our clients noware homeless and will sleep here. why is that?
well, realistically there'sbudget cuts to various services or whatever, and homelessness has been a major one. we need more shelters andwe need more hostels. lifeshare is the first point of contactfor people living on the streets, and currently sees over 100 clients. a regular member of theirdrop-in clinic is titch. i've got a spliff there. where do you sleep at night, titch? car park up portland street.
are you waiting for a hostel? when was the last timeyou had a spice hit? about half 10, 11 o'clock this morning. how are you feeling right now? like i want to kill someone. i want to go back into strangeways(prison) and do a 28 day detox. but that would be pointless. why would it be pointlessgoing into strangeways? because there's more spice in therethan what's out on the streets.
[inaudible] you look like you're about to roll a spliff. yeah, [inaudible] i forgottena spliff this morning. that's about 40 spliffsright there in that one. i don't want it, but i'm in pain. i'm in that much pain. where does it hurt? my stomach, shooting pains down my leg, shooting pains up my spine.
pains in my neck and in my arm. harmful if swallowed. may cause respiratory irritation. do you want a glass of water to drink? have you ever seen any other drug like this? this is supposed to be legal, but it has a sense of deteriorationthat you don't expect from crack. crack cocaine, and then quickly, rapidly deteriorated,over a few weeks of using it.
i've gone from that to this. can you remember the firsttime you started spice? in the summer seeing young peoplebegging that would have never normally begged before andthey're going begging for spice. risking their accommodation andeverything, cuz they're not going home to accommodation cuz they're off theirfaces on spice in the car parks. how much spice do you smoke? six grams a day. six grams a day?- yeah.
and how much does that cost? it's three for 20 pounds soyou are looking at about 30 pounds or 40 pounds a day. i'd rather it be illegal because, do youknow what yeah i'd rather blaze my bud. look at me now yeah, right,i'm rattling, right, my head's all over, right,and i can't think straight. now, if this was bud, don't get me wrong,i'd be sat here stressed, judy's seen me stressed when i've not had bud, but i'm not like this, i'm not rattling. you know what, it's horrible. and it's the same irritability thatyou would associate with crack, but
you're actually sometimes now showingphysical withdrawal signs as well, which you usually associate with heroin. i mean some of the young people heredescribe the heart palpitating and really, really going really fast. they just will not take on board that how detrimental it's gonna be to theirmental health, their long-term well-being. how did it make you feel? the first time i had it?- yeah. it was actually pandora's box as well.
were you there? we can do that. i think. i don't know! what are you doing with your legs? and i was just waving my legs,laughing my ass off at every single thing. i don't know. you had a spliff about half an hour ago now. how are you feeling now? i'm not as bad, a bit anxious but not too bad.
i'm putting my full time intogetting off spice, i know i can but i have to be away frombeing surrounded by it. at the moment the town hasbecome a breeding ground for it. everybody comes into town, they won'tgo home because they need to get spice. it's being in thissituation on the streets, while everybody else is doing it, that ikind of find it hard to get away from it. titch, do you see that your way outof spice, and being surrounded by spice culture is by gettinga secure accommodation in a hostel? yes, d'you know what?
i've said this from day one. i will stop smoking spice wheni get in a hostel, right? and the only reason, the reason is yeah,is because of the bud. i'd love to smoke my bud afterthis because i know yeah, my bud ain't making me unfit,it ain't making me drop, it ain't fucking my head up and that. before meeting tim, johan realized thatlegal highs like spice were addictive. he's only gone a few hours without smokingit before showing signs of withdrawal. there's the rattling going now.
i wanted to find out from someonewhose job it is to get people off drugs, if the legal status of a particularsubstance had any impact on whether people take it or not. there is a level of naivetearound thinking that by making legal highs illegal,people will be less inclined to use them. if somebody is already in a situation ofrelative chaos in their life in general, it would be unlikely that we would seea significant impact in people using them. it's not necessarily gonna positivelyimpact on the people who are using it, but it impacts on who's in charge of thesupply and where the supply comes from.
it's a public health issue. and what we wouldn't want to see is for the criminal aspect of that problem to beprioritized over the public health aspect. i think all services providinginformation, support, access for members of the public, we've hadsignificant financial cuts, i think, over the last five years. and that's probably going to continue, so there'll be a 25% reduction inthe overall spend on drugs and alcohol. he's one of the biggestspice heads in town.
i know two people who have died of it. at a city center soup kitchen, local health workers are dealing withspice casualties on a daily basis. the guy that we firstcame across on the wall, he was completely out of it, unconscious. we've been talking tolots of people about it. they say they've never seen a drughave as massive effects as legal highs do on people. no. we've gone from having no problems with it
to now we're getting three orfour people every night. we've had no training on it, obviously,when we did the training it wasn't there, now we are starting to get training onit because there's so much out there, it's so bad. outlawing something doesn't sort ofchange people's intention to do something. it doesn't no, but it becomesillegal more can be done about it. same again, now i can smell it now. - yeah, me too. and it doesn't smell like weed,does it?
no.it is so much chemically related, that nobody really knows what's in it. it will knock you out and it will numbyour senses to the elements and stuff. this is why it's becominga homeless phenomenon, it's because it numbs your senses and it makes you dull andit makes the elements not bother you. later that night we went to find it. as we wandered the streets,it was hard to ignore the irony and the fact that spice was, to some degree,a problem of the government's own making.
and there seemed to be a similaritybetween titch's cycle of satisfying his own addiction and the government's way of handling drugs. a sort of whac-a-mole tactic thatonly serves as a temporary solution. as ministers debate the details ofthe new psychoactive substances bill, while cutting addiction services andhousing support, only time will tell where the problemmight pop up again in the future.
