NORTH Yorkshire Police has seen a fall in the use of so called ‘legal highs’ - a year after a ban against the drugs came into force.

Photographs of people on one of the substances - known as Spice - recently made national headlines. The psychoactive substances caused them to pass out on their feet on the streets of Manchester, leading to users being branded ‘Spice zombies’.

North Yorkshire Police said the use of psychoactive substances had not completely disappeared, but reports had fallen since Spice and other formerly legal highs were banned a year ago.

Chief Inspector Lindsey Robson is a force lead on the drugs - now known as new psychoactive substances (NPS) - and is based in Scarborough, where reports of Spice and other formerly legal highs were high prior to the ban.

She said: “I think when the problem first became apparent in Scarborough, before anywhere else in the force, it was very much a general [NPS] thing, not just Spice. We didn’t have powers at that time to seize them so couldn’t get them tested, and there was a real gap in the legislation from a policing perspective.

“I don’t think I would say Spice is a problem, but NPS is still a problem. Across the coast we have taken proactive action with the new legislation and just before Christmas conducted five warrants against places we believed were selling them despite the ban, and a large amount was seized. In York, from speaking to colleagues, there was quite a lot of engagement with retailers prior to the legislation coming in, advising them to dispose of stock, and my understanding is that all of the retailers complied with that.”

PC Dan Kirven is based in York, and said there appeared to have been a reduction in incidents of possession of psychoactive substances in the city centre since the ban came into force.

He said this was reassuring, considering the dangers and amount of resource needed when dealing with individuals affected by the substances.

PC Kirven said: “When they were active in the public domain, the behaviour of users was often unpredictable. It was potentially dangerous because of the unpredictable effects and we needed to treat people who were under the influence in the same category as people who needed to be treated for possible overdoses.

“They would be taken to hospital and we would then have to be on a bed watch with them whilst they were treated in hospital. It was taking officers off the streets when they could be responding to other incidents requiring a police presence.”

Chief Insp Robson said there was still a discrepancy in the law, as last year’s ban on NPS did not count personal possession as an offence.

While Spice and other NPS are now illegal, Chief Insp Robson said it was by no means gone from the streets.

She said: “It’s not as visible a problem as it was but we know there’s still a supply. We know we have got people out there who are supplying it and, for all we know, who are making it. The obvious way in which it was being bought and sold isn’t there anymore, but we’re not naive enough to think the problem has gone away. Clearly there’s still a supply issue and the problem is finding where that supply is because it’s so easily made.

“I think what we see is there are certain cohorts of users who lead very chaotic lifestyles and place a lot of demand on a number of services and this is now an additional demand which we have not experienced previously. There were already a number of support services in place for dependency on heroin, cocaine and cannabis. When this first became an issue, the support services didn’t exist as it wasn’t illegal so it’s a quite complex world we were operating in.”

In Scarborough, police share briefings with council and trading standards officers, as part of the joint Community Impact Team.

Sandra Rees, community safety and safeguarding manager with Scarborough Borough Council, said a big part of the job was engaging with chaotic users to keep them and members of the public safe.

She added: “We’ve certainly seen problems. We’ve taken out an injunction on one individual as he was taking NPS.

“He would regularly be laid out in doorways, didn’t know where he was , and we had a lot of problems with him.”