Ketamine is on the up again, tranquillisers are replacing low grade heroin, potent ecstasy pills are back and the artificial division between legal and illegal drugs is crumbling. Max Daly and Peter Simonson take a look at the results of this year’s UK-wide street drug trends survey.
Ketamine, the powerful hallucinogenic anaesthetic, has been the biggest riser in the UK drug market in the last year, according to Druglink Street Drug Trends 2011. Feedback from the investigative survey, carried out among frontline drug services, police forces, drug action teams and user groups in 20 town and cities across the UK, has revealed that the use of ketamine had increased in 15 of the 20 areas since 2010.