Spicing up life behind barsALEX CAVENDISH first encountered Spice, a synthetic drug that imitates cannabis, in prison in 2012 when a sleepy looking Dutch man, serving a sentence for drug offences, started trading it. By 2014, Mr Cavendish says, half his fellow prisoners would “literally stagger” down the hall to roll-call each day, high on the drug, varying their routine only so far as to pass out in the grounds, be violently sick in a washroom, or urinate in a six-man dormitory.
New synthetic drugs are on the rise in prisons, and Spice—which in practice refers to several chemical variants—dominates the market. Prison seizures of Spice increased from 15 in 2010 to 430 in the first seven months of last year. In March a report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a think-tank, quoted the head of substance misuse at one prison as saying that about 60% of inmates were regularly taking it; some prisoners estimated that the figure was nearer 90%. By contrast, outside prison walls the drug market contains just a sprinkling of Spice: a Europe-wide survey in 2014 found only 4% of those aged 15-24 had used new synthetic drugs...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, At Her Majesty’s pleasure
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