AUTHORITIES are struggling to cope with ‘dangerous’ legal highs because the drug industry is moving faster than legislation can, police say.

Figures uncovered by The Northern Echo show that legal highs have been implicated in a growing number of incidents investigated by Durham Police in recent years.

Officers believe users are risking their lives by taking drugs that are not tested or regulated and are often mixed with illegal substances.

Between 2012 and 2015, incidents across County Durham involving legal highs escalated from just 13 in 2012 to 92 in 2014-15, according to a Freedom of Information request.

Inspector Colin Dobson, from the force’s Alcohol Harm Reduction Unit, said some such incidents stemmed from people ingesting the legal drugs alongside illegal substances while others involved the contamination of legal highs with other illicit chemicals.

Warning users against the dangers of legal highs – which often attempt to mimic the effect of illegal hallucinogenics, opiates or cannabis - he said many untested substances flooding the market could prove as dangerous as class A substances, especially when combined with other illicit drugs.

Last week police raided a Darlington business over fears they had been supplying legal highs contaminated with a class B drug, a scenario becoming common in a market largely unregulated.

Insp Dobson said: “Using the term legal about psychoactive substances suggests they have been tested and are safe to use which is not the case at all.

“Many of these substances are coming in untested from places like China and it’s only after they’re seized that we find out what’s in them.

“People don’t know how these drugs will react when taken with other substances and we have no way of knowing what they do.

“Sometimes the effects can be much greater than the controlled drug they try to mimic.”

Insp Dobson is backing Durham Chief Constable Mike Barton’s calls for drug law reforms in a bid to tackle the issue.

He said officers were forced to resort to “unexpected” laws when dealing with legal highs because many of them are not yet legislated against.

He said: “The misuse of drugs act did not envisage this type of product – there’s an argument for drugs laws to be updated to tackle things like legal highs.

“I don’t know the answer but this issue needs to be part of the wider discussion on drugs laws.”