Number of 'legal highs' soaring, warns United Nations body

A United Nations body which oversees global drug treaties has warned so-called legal highs present a "growing threat" as the number of substances rocketed last year.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said the drugs, known officially as "new psychoactive substances", had "continued to emerge in increasingly high numbers over the past year"."By October 2015, members states had reported 602 new substances.

"This represents a 55 per cent increase from the previous year, when 388 new substances were reported," said a new report.

The agency, which is independent but oversees the way countries deal with drugged banned under UN treaties, added: "Keeping up with this pace represents a key challenge for the international drug control system, which will need to come up with more flexible and workable approaches to tackle the threat of new psychoactive substances." It added that the drugs represented a "growing threat".

In a significant shift of language, the INCB said the international drug control treaties which it oversees "do not mandate a 'war on drugs'".

Werner Sipp, the INCB president, said: “It is not the case that the world must choose between ‘militarized’ drug law enforcement on one hand and the legalization of non-medical use of drugs on the other; but rather to put health and welfare at the centre of a balanced drug policy.”

It comes after another UN drug agency was caught in an embarrassing row last year after Sir Richard Branson, the British businessman, leaked an official document which appeared to back decriminalising possession of drugs. The document from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said liberalisation of laws on controlled substances may need to be carried out world-wide. But the significance of the two-page paper was contested by UN chiefs in Vienna, who said it did not amount to official policy.

Sir Richard, who sits on the Global Commission on Drug Policy, broke an embargo on the document before its official release at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October.

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