Ketamine 'stealing futures of our city's children'
Ketamine is "stealing the futures" of a growing number of teenagers in Liverpool, a councillor has warned.
Councillors in the city agreed to draw up an action plan to raise better awareness of the extreme effects the drug can have.
A letter will also be sent from the council to the Secretary of State for Health calling for ketamine to be reclassified a Class A drug.
Labour councillor Lynnie Hinnigan, who proposed the motion calling for a ketamine action plan, told a full council meeting on Wednesday she had visited a specialist ketamine clinic in the city and heard first hand from a 20-year-old addict who had suffered incontinence as a result of using the drug.
She said the woman had "admitted to a room of strangers how she had to wear adult pull-ups, didn't want to die, and was going to leave the session and reuse as she couldn't cope with the pain."
Ketamine is an anaesthetic which is used in medicine as an anti-depressant and for pain relief.
It usually comes as a crystalline powder or liquid. It is also thought of as a party drug due to its hallucinogenic effects.
Ms Hinnigan told BBC Radio Merseyside that in her day job working with vulnerable young people, she was hearing about the drug "more and more".
"It terrifies me," she said.
"And you can see the impact on social media too, with teenagers sharing videos of people using the drug, they think it's funny but it's absolutely not."
In her speech she said videos of young people "k-holing" - a state of dissociation and paralysis - was something "that some now see as entertainment".
She added the effects of heavy use of the drug could include bladder and kidney problems, with some young people experiencing bladder failure and ultimately having to use a stoma bag.
She said there needed to be an action plan with education campaigns and youth workers specifically targeting ketamine use. She also said dedicated clinics like the Lifeboat Project - a safe space for people recovering from addiction - should be replicated elsewhere in the city.
In England, the number of under-18s entering drug treatment who describe ketamine as one of their problem substances rose from 335 to 917 between 2020-21 and 2023-24, according to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System.
An anonymised 2023 survey of more than 13,000 secondary schoolchildren from 185 schools across England reported 11% of 15-year-olds had been offered ketamine at some point. The same study, conducted for NHS England, suggested the use of ketamine among schoolchildren had more than doubled in the last decade from 0.4% in 2013 to 0.9% in 2023.
Professor of substance use at Liverpool John Moores University, Harry Sumnall, said one of the issues in Liverpool was a lack of local data about how widespread use was in the city.
"Drug services tell us that the number of people seeking treatment is increasing and hospitals particularly urologists are concerned around really heavy use and the impact on the bladder – these are relatively rare cases albeit increasing in number," he said.
The government said in January it had asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to commission advice on ketamine and to consider whether it should remain controlled as a Class B substance or become a Class A drug.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
Seizures linked to 'dangerous batch' of ketamine
Children 'needing urostomy bags' due to drug use
Liverpool City Council
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Growing number of MPs changing their mind on assisted dying
Opposition to a bill which would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales is growing among MPs, the BBC has found. The Assisted Dying Bill was supported by 330 MPs last year, passing its first major vote in the House of Commons with a majority of 55 MPs from a wide range of political parties. But at least a dozen MPs who backed it or abstained in November have now said they are likely to vote against it. The bill would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to receive medical assistance to die Supporters remain confident it will eventually become law but it faces further parliamentary tests. How assisted dying laws across the UK could change GPs split over assisted dying plans, BBC research suggests MPs back proposals to legalise assisted dying Assisted dying bill: How did my MP vote? The bill is a private members' bill, sponsored by backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater. MPs have been given a free vote on it, meaning they can decide based on their conscience rather than having to follow a party line. They have spent the past few months examining it in detail, with more than 500 amendments tabled. Some of these changes will be voted on by MPs next Friday - and a final Commons vote will take place in the summer, before it heads to the House of Lords for further scrutiny. Markus Campbell-Savours, the Labour MP for Penrith and Solway, is one of those who has said he's now likely to vote against the bill after previously supporting it. He said he still considers himself "a supporter of assisted dying" but believes the current bill crosses "red lines for protecting the vulnerable". "I want to see safeguards that will ensure that assisted dying is not overextended to include those in situations where there are alternative ways to improve the quality of their lives," said Campbell-Savours. "I would also be very concerned if legislation produced a situation where people who considered themselves a burden on their families and friends felt pressured to end their life." Fellow Labour MP Josh Fenton-Glynn also plans to vote no, having previously abstained. "If you'd asked me at any point in my life what I thought of assisted dying, I'd have always said in favour," he told the BBC. He has suggested a number of amendments to the bill, and claims he is "still open to supporting" the plans, but doubts it will change after Leadbeater blocked previous similar attempts. "We see quite a few of the amendments which are specifically aimed at stopping coercion being opposed by the supporters of the bill," he said, adding: "I don't think chances to make the bill safer have been taken." The two MPs have added their names to a growing list of their colleagues who have suggested they will switch sides including: Tory former minister George Freeman, Tory MPs Mike Wood and Andrew Snowden, Lib Dem Brian Matthew, Labour's Jonathan Hinder, Reform UK chief whip Lee Anderson and ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe. Labour MP Debbie Abrahams and Tory MP Charlie Dewhirst, who abstained previously, will vote against. Labour's Karl Turner, who voted in favour at second reading, is now abstaining. Tory MP David Davis has not announced how he plans to cast his next vote, but has publicly backed a number of amendments that would make sweeping changes to the bill. Some MPs have also changed their stance, by supporting the bill. Minister Chris Bryant is understood to be backing it, having abstained in November. Labour MP Jack Abbott, who voted against last November, is also now likely to vote in favour. Others who were hesitantly supportive are now more firmly in favour. Liz Saville Roberts, the leader of Plaid Cymru at Westminster, said she was initially concerned but supported the principle of assisted dying. "I think the safeguards have got stronger," she said. "They have been improved through the bill committee and through the evidence that we heard." One of the changes made as the bill was scrutinised was allowing Senedd members a vote on whether it will apply in Wales. Despite opposition, supporters expect the bill to clear the Commons and go on to the House of Lords. Campaigners backing the bill do not expect many MPs to reverse their views - but with such tight margins, efforts to shore up support are in full swing. One major threat, for supporters of the bill, is MPs deciding to return home to their constituencies instead of voting. Due to a quirk of the parliamentary system, private members' bills are normally debated on Fridays - a day when MPs are normally in their constituencies. There is also growing concern that the government cannot afford to keep giving it parliamentary time. One Labour source told the BBC: "Given the huge amount of difficult issues the government face, from winter fuel payments and Personal Independence Payment to defence and special educational needs and disabilities spending, a tight vote on assisted dying becomes a real problem. "Lots of MPs think No 10 would be unwise to expend political capital continuing with this very divisive issue rather than choosing to fix the stuff we got elected to sort." Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
3 reasons why Starmer could U-turn on controversial benefits cuts to PIP
An upcoming vote in the House of Commons on government proposals to cut £5bn from the benefits bill has sparked a rift in the Labour Party. The Labour leader is reportedly facing a growing backbench rebellion over the government's welfare reforms announced in March, with some reports suggesting as many as 100 backbench Labour MPs have signed a letter saying they can not support the proposals as they stand. Some of the party's MPs have been publicly critical. Imran Hussain said 41,000 disabled people in his Bradford East constituency would be affected and that many were 'rightly horrified' by the policy. Neil Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, is one of those to have signed the letter, branding the reforms wrong". I have signed this letter calling for the government to rethink its stance on disability benefits because I think the current plans are need to be listening to people's concerns and I hope things will begin to change. — Neil Duncan-Jordan MP (@NeilForPoole) May 8, 2025 Ahead of the vote (which is expected to take place some time in June) the anger has reportedly led the prime minister to consider softening the proposed reforms – specifically changes to the eligibility rules surrounding the benefits payments to disabled people. Yahoo News takes a look at what's going on. The government has proposed a raft of benefits cuts, predominantly affecting those who are disabled or have a long-term health condition. One of those cuts is to personal independence payments (PIP), a benefit for people in and out of work that helps with the additional costs of living with a disability. The government wants to limit who is eligible by changing the assessment criteria from 2026. It means at least 800,000 disabled people could lose out on payments, according to figures published by the department of work and pensions. The health component of universal credit (UC) is also to be frozen until 2030, with the amount cut in half for new claimants from April 2026. Under-22s who are disabled or have a long-term illness will also no longer be able to claim a health top-up of universal credit from April 2026, with the money saved set to be reinvested by the government into training young people. In total, the cuts will leave 2.25 million households losing out on £500 per year, according to the government's own impact assessment. Some of the government's welfare reforms are open to consultation, with the public being asked to submit their thoughts until 30 June 2025. However, critics have said that only the less serious reforms — like scrapping the work capability assessment for those applying for the health component of universal credit — are open to discussion. In recent weeks, reports have indicated ministers are considering softening the cut. According to the Financial Times, one of the rumoured changes includes making the proposed changes to eligibility for PIP less strict, which could mean 195,000 fewer disabled people are affected by the reforms. Claimants could also get a longer 'transitional period' — from when they are informed their benefits are cut to their benefits stopping — so they have more time to plan for the loss in income, the Times reported. The rumoured changes reportedly hopes to get frustrated MPs onside, who have taken moral objections with the scale and severity of the cuts, the disproportionate impact for voters in the Labour heartlands, as well as the increasingly positive polling for Reform. Several Labour MPs have taken issue with the cuts, voicing their concerns that Labour has historically supported and championed a robust welfare system. According to the Times, 170 backbenchers warned that they may not support the reforms that make it harder to claim PIP as well as cutting incapacity benefits to increase incentives to work. Added to this, it warned that the scale of the cuts had not been seen since George Osborne's austerity reforms, which the party voted staunchly against. Forty-two MPs — including Nadia Whittome, Diane Abbott and Stella Creasy — wrote to the Cabinet earlier this month saying that the reforms were "impossible to support" and called for "a change in direction". The letter reads: 'The planned cuts of more than £7bn represent the biggest attack on the welfare state since George Osborne ushered in the years of austerity and over three million of our poorest and most disadvantaged will be affected. "Without a change in direction, the green paper will be impossible to support.' Another private letter, signed by 100 MPs, said they could not support the government in the disability vote, the Guardian reported. MPs don't just have the party whip to answer to — they are also held to account by their constituents. While the scale of the PIP cuts are clearly far-reaching, the map indicates that the 10 areas most affected by the government's PIP cuts are in Labour heartlands. In fact, out of top 20 areas where claimants are set to miss out on PIP, 19 voted for Labour in the general election — with Clacton voting for Nigel Farage's Reform UK party. In fact, many of the areas are emerging Labour/Reform UK battlegrounds. And, in the wake of Labour's chastening local election results in May, some have pointed the finger at the government's welfare cuts as one of the key drivers of discontent among the party's traditional voting base. 3. Reform are out-positioning Labour on welfare At a national level, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has pledged to reverse the winter fuel cut and scrap the two-child benefit cap if the party came to power in a naked attempt to target Labour's perceived weakness in the area of welfare. And while the government has signalled a partial U-turn on the winter fuel payment, it continues to dodge calls from campaigners and MPs to ditch the cap. Overall, the most recent YouGov poll seems to indicate the public are also losing faith in Labour on welfare issues, with 69% saying the government is handling welfare issues badly. A DWP spokesperson said: "We are determined to create a welfare system that supports people into work and out of poverty. 'At the heart of the government's reforms is £1bn scheme to help the long-term sick or disabled find good, secure jobs. 'Our Plan for Change will change people's lives for the better. That is why we have raised the national living wage, increased benefits, and given additional help to the poorest households.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
‘These are not numbers – they are people': what ex-communist Slovenia can teach the world about child poverty
Much of the world doesn't have a clue what to do about child poverty, or even when to do it. In the UK the Labour government recently delayed its flagship policy on tackling the issue until the autumn. But if you're looking for inspiration, it might be worth asking what Slovenia has been getting right. The country has the lowest rates of child poverty in Europe. Why? The glaringly obvious reason is that Slovenia is a very economically equal country. 'The heritage of the social state, from communist times, is still here,' says Marta Gregorčič, a professor at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, which addresses household distress and poverty. However, this is more than a broad-spectrum equality story. There is a deep, stated commitment to eradicating child poverty in Slovenia, and you can read that in various and sometimes counterintuitive ways. There is a national action plan for children across all kinds of metrics: affordable early years care; educational inclusivity, particularly for Roma children; protective measures on mental health; access to housing – which is transparent and prioritised. The country has 'very strong humanitarian and civil organisations,' says Gregorčič, but Slovenians also take as given that it is everyone's job to make sure kids don't get siloed by social class. And then, seeing one of those organisations up close, one driver of the country's success surfaces constantly: they are never satisfied; one child in poverty is too many. The numbers speak for themselves – the amount of children at risk of deprivation in Slovenia is 10.3%, just under half the EU average of 24.4%, according to Eurostat. The UK is no longer included in these figures, but for comparison, a separate Unicef study found that the UK was third from bottom of the OECD in 2021, and that only Turkish and Colombian children were more likely to be living below the poverty line. Slovenia, in that study? Still first. I'm here to visit Zveza Anita Ogulin & ZPM (ZPM for short), a children's charity in the east of Ljubljana, in a set of low-rise municipal buildings on a tidy, grass-banked street whose name translates as Proletarian Road. Doris Rojo, its head of communications, is annoyed that it gets these buildings rent-free from the state, but has to pay rent on the larger site opposite, which houses a community centre and food bank. Rojo refers frequently to the 'socialism that is left from the past', to explain many features of a Slovenian childhood: the custom of cooked meals at school that lots of children don't pay for, for instance, or the idea that kids have a right to a holiday, by the sea or in the mountains, and no one would think of organising a group trip that didn't include a cross-section of social classes. 'This was considered part of life,' Rojo says. 'Everyone went on holiday, at least once a year. The state even owned apartments by the sea, available for workers on reduced terms.' Somehow, capitalism never attained the status of inevitability or modernity in Slovenian policy discourse – just a different way of doing things, that is only sometimes better. When they call a street after the proletariat, they don't mean that in a bad way. 'Social protection policy in Slovenia has always quite strongly supported families and children,' Gregorčič says, noting that female workforce participation has a long history, going back to the second world war. 'All these policies for women in the labour market, all the subsidies for parental leave, I believe contribute to a lower risk of poverty.' She goes on to list these assistances and allowances: 'maternity and paternity leave at 100% pay; the right to reduced working hours; a childbirth grant; breastfeeding breaks; allowances for large families; allowances for childcare if you have children with disabilities; quite a significant child allowance – €115 a month for the first child in low income households'. Policy, history and social cohesion interact in subtle ways. Female workforce participation has also created a tradition of grandparental childcare, but family help is only part of the picture. Peter Wostner, a policy expert at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, describes this geographically. 'We're a very small country, which internally is very diverse. To give you a flavour – there are 33 or 34 regions within Slovenia by which people principally identify themselves – a similar number of different dialects, different cuisines, different everything. Why am I mentioning that? Because of that element of community, the networks within these areas are strong.' Perhaps more generous attitudes created the conditions for a solid social safety net, or perhaps the security creates more generosity, or more likely they're in a feedback loop. Covid triggered a scramble for emergency support common to many European nations, but its aftermath brought on a deeper consideration of the struggles many working families faced here. In 2021, a new child welfare advisory group was formed made up of NGOs, the local Unicef branch and the government-funded Social Protection Institute. Among other things, it consulted 37 children aged 12 to 15 from all over Slovenia, who made proposals on a draft child guarantee action plan. It had fast, concrete results – 13,000 of the most deprived children were guaranteed computer access by 2024 – and the overall finding was that they needed a 'social protection system for the entire family, not only for the child in need within the family. After all, a child is part of a family and shares the same fate as its other members.' Maybe that sounds obvious, that you can't get serious about children's dignity and life chances if you're not also serious about their parents' wages and rents. Economists like Gregorčič will acknowledge the 'strong social protections for families', but she immediately moves on to stubborn pockets of deprivation: 'the migrants, Roma, the homeless, the erased'. (When Slovenia declared independence in 1991, 25,000 people were removed from the registry of permanent residents, thereby losing social and civil rights, and disappearing from the statistics). 'There were 5,000 children among them, and now they are grown up,' Gregorčič continues, 'but it is still a huge problem, the marginalised groups who are missing from the statistics.' The assembled team at ZPM – Rojo, plus Tea Dorić, a social worker, Julija Mišič, the communications lead, and Živa Logar, programme coordinator – also give short shrift to the child-poverty rankings, because the numbers are going in the wrong direction. 'We still have 41,000 children living under the poverty line,' Rojo says, 'and these are not just numbers, they are people.' Slovenia's population is small – two million; if that were scaled up to a UK-sized population, it would equate to 1.5 million kids. In fact, in the UK there are 4.5 million children living in poverty, almost a third. It's almost as if our runaway numbers have washed away our seriousness of purpose. Dorić is technically not a social worker but a social pedagogue – a more holistic form of careworker, concerned with equality and relationships as much as material needs. A lot of European countries practise social pedagogy (Poland, Hungary, Spain, Germany), which if you describe it conceptually sounds kind of: 'Meh, don't we all do that?' You need examples to really get it. Yvalia Febrer, an associate professor of social work at Kingston University, offered this: 'In the UK, you'll get a social worker who will say, 'I'm little Jonny's social worker, I'm not your social worker, even though you're his mum. I'm not interested in your housing issues … I'm just looking at his needs, and whether they're being met. If you're not able to meet them, then that's neglect.' A social pedagogue will say: 'If the problem is housing, let's fix the housing.'' Dorić is the first social pedagogue I've met in real life, and she is everything about that model you would dream of: fierce, imaginative, indefatigable, humane. 'We are trying to say to the wider public, children are not inherently bad. They're amazing, they're so loving and smart, they are doing regular things.' Mišič chimes in: 'Society is bad, not the children. Our parents can't pay the bills, they can't buy food, they can't go on holiday, they are alone.' ZPM started as a charity providing holidays, nearly 70 years ago, but it has expanded its mission to provide a range of services – extra tuition, financial support, therapy, youth groups, food parcels (particularly during Covid) and financial advice. 'It's hard to tell someone how to better manage their finances if you know that they don't have enough. Families will spend a long time walking the line of just about meeting their family's needs, and then one crisis, and the debt keeps on growing. It snowballs,' Mišič says. That collective memory of a socialist past cuts two ways. 'There is a perception that people who are employed cannot be poor. People find it hard to imagine even when it's happening to them,' Mišič continues. Rojo says the stats are lagging the reality: 'But what we are facing really, is that the children we're working with, who are now in poor families, are mainly those where one or both parents work.' Across the road from ZPM, at the youth and community centre, Nuša Lesar, a well-known TV presenter, is running a workshop for teenagers; behind that, there's a food bank, crates of identical flour and supplies, plainly corporately donated; in a third room, I met Vedran Jovanovski, 14, and Tamara Grozden Mirosavlejevič, 11. Vedran is a migrant from North Macedonia; his father is a barber, his mother was a social worker but has to retrain to work in Slovenia. They moved two and a half years ago. His English is excellent, as is his Slovenian. 'For older people, like my mum, it's more difficult. But it's not that hard.' He wants to be an engineer or an architect, and already dresses like one – natty skinny trousers and a blazer. 'We had our own house in Macedonia; my dad had his own barber shop. We had everything, but the situation there is not good,' he says. (The country is politically turbulent and riven with corruption.) 'We didn't come here with friends – we just decided on our own to move and got here, didn't know anything. But we kind of fitted in with people, and with society.' Tamara is quieter. Her mother is a doctor, her father died a few years ago. She loves to dance and teaches younger children traditional Slovenian moves, but both of them come to the children's centre for extra tutoring. She doesn't want to be a doctor because she can't stand the sight of blood, but that's as far as she's got on the career planning, which is fair enough. She's only 11. A core principle of the children's centre, the holidays, the third sector overall, is that kids shouldn't be excluded from anything because of their income or class, whether that's TV workshops or computers or holidays by the sea. In so many ways, the Slovenian story traces that of western democracies everywhere: welfare states have been contracting since the financial crisis. That might show up immediately as a direct impact – Gregorčič describes 'restrictive measures straight after the financial crash, which stopped child allowances being a human right; they became a social right. At that time, childhood poverty rose a lot.' Or it might show up over time as wage erosion and underfunded public services, and that arc would be familiar across a large number of countries. But where Slovenia differs is in the amount of child deprivation it will tolerate. 'We know they are not hungry at school,' Gregorčič says. 'We have free meals in school. We know they are surviving, to say it really harshly. But I, for example, am not proud.' Child poverty isn't the only area where Slovenia ranks high; it's one of the safest countries in the world; it has the third largest share of forests in Europe. 'Five years ago, we started not even comparing ourselves to the EU average [for social health indicators],' Wostner says. 'We benchmark ourselves against the innovators. We're not interested in the US model, we're not interested in the Asian model – we're going in the direction of the social innovation leaders, which is the Nordic model.' I met no one who celebrated having the fewest deprived children in Europe; it seems you can't get this right unless your target figure is zero.
