THE head teacher at a school hit by a drug scare last year has said a campaign to ban legal highs has made the school a better place.

Woldgate College head teacher Jeff Bower made his comments as a national survey suggested users of the drug mephedrone were still taking it and a poll found one-in-four of those questioned had taken the drug in the last month.

It is just over a year since The Press launched our Menace Of Mephedrone campaign calling for the drug to be banned.

It was sparked after the collapse of a 17-year-old student who had taken the drug at Woldgate College in Pocklington.

The campaign ultimately saw the former “legal high” reclassified as a Class B substance.

Mr Bower said the impact of the Menace Of Mephedrone campaign hadbeen “remarkable”.

He said: “Whatever image ‘legal highs’ might have had in our students’ eyes 12 months ago, the situation is clearly very different now.

“The events at this college and the campaign which followed helped to expose the reality behind the image and this has changed the way many of our students think about these issues. “I am delighted that something so positive has come from the frightening incident which we experienced at Woldgate.

“However, we must never be complacent as the picture is constantly changing and we need to be alert to whatever is being perceived as the new exciting substance to try at parties.”

The dangers of mephedrone, also known as m-cat and meow meow, became national news after several teenagers died after taking the substance, including 24-year-old Lois Waters, of Norton.

Our campaign won backing from politicians of all parties, teachers, health workers, police and drugs workers and after ten weeks of campaigning and lobbying the government announced it was to be banned.

Dealers now face up to 14 years in prison and users five years behind bars.

On the day it was reclassified, police seized a shipment worth £30,000 of mephedrone from the York area. The delivery contained several kilos of the potentially lethal substance and had been imported from China.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said since then police had seized a further 179 grams confirmed as mephedrone. Forensic tests are still being carried out on other substances that have been seized.

A spokesperson for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust also said that since the ban, incidents of mephedrone had been reduced.

“From talking to ambulance crews working in and around the York area, it appears that 999 calls for patients suffering from the effects of this particular drug have not been as frequent as they were before the ban was imposed,” the spokeswoman said.

Anyone with any information about drug dealing should phone police on 0845 6060247 or Crimestoppers on 0800 5551111.