AIF relaunch legal highs campaign

Glastonbury, the Isle of Wight festival, Bestival and more than 40 other major summer music festivals are to black out their websites to highlight the dangers of “legal highs”. The 24-hour online blackout campaign will see organisers replacing their online presence with an image of a roulette wheel and the message: “You could lose the lot on legal highs.”  T in the Park, the Secret Garden party, Lovebox and Parklife are also taking part in the initiative organised by the Association of Independent Festivals. The homepage of each website will lead to an infographic showing key statistics, facts and advice about legal highs. It will include information and advice about nitrous oxide or “laughing gas”, whose widespread use has triggered serious health fears. Fields strewn with the metal canisters that are used to inhale the gas have become a familiar sight at many festivals with Glastonbury banning the gas this year after an exploding cannister caused an injury last year.

Glastonbury takes stand on 'legal highs'

Glastonbury has joined the likes of Bestival, Lovebox and Global Gathering warning of the dangers of  'psychoactive synthetic substances' - so called legal highs. Statistics released by the ONS last year showed an 80% increase in legal high-related deaths, from 29 to 52, while health researchers say taking them is like "dancing in a minefield", since the influx of unidentified substances into the market is so fast-paced that it outstrips drug laws. Various festivals including Glastonbury, shut down their sites on Monday 5th May in a so-called 'blackout', part of an Association of Independent Festivals backed initiative to raise awareness of the risks of taking legal highs. Maryon Stewart, Founder of Angelus Foundation, the charity collaborating with the AIF on the campaign, says: "Legal highs are a huge but hidden problem because young people are acting in ignorance and no-one is measuring the harms. We are determined to keep expanding our prevention programme into new areas and bigger events until everyone get the message that the effects of these substances are unpredictable and high risk".