A SHOP manager selling so-called legal highs before the new law came into force today has backed the ban after seeing the ‘dangerous’ effects they can have.

Kiya Hayward, who runs Lazy Frog in the tented market, sold nitrous oxide up until Wednesday but stopped selling psychoactive substances, such as the synthetic cannabis known as Spice, a year ago because of the disturbing side-effects.

The 19-year-old said: “I think the ban has taken too long, it should have happened a while ago.

“I see every day what it does to people. They get violent and nasty, they don’t look very well. They can’t walk properly or look after themselves, it’s not nice to see someone living like that.”

The store, which sells incense and tobacco related items, had nitrous oxide canisters, also known as hippy crack and laughing gas, in stock but customers would come in to enquire about stronger legal highs.

“Anything is bad when you do it to the extreme,” Kiya added. “With the gas canisters, I don’t think they are as dangerous, but it depends how much of them you do. But everything else under the ban I think is dangerous.

“With the harder stuff like Spice I never liked it. We used to sell it about a year ago and it what it did to people made us stop selling it - it turned people nasty.”

Kiya, whose dad Nick owns the shop, also said demand for the substances quietened down after news of the upcoming ban.

“If anything people have come in and said to me they are glad it’s being banned and it was a long time coming,” she added.

“Generally I don’t think they are used as much in Swindon as people think. But with certain products I think it will be driven underground. People probably will go to people on street corners and get it. It depends how far in you are with them.”

However Superintendent Phil Staynings of Wiltshire Police said it was too early to say if the new legislation banning the production, supply and importation of the substances would create a new underground type of selling.

He said: “Tragically we’ve seen deaths and the harm caused locally by legal highs and we are still seeing people being admitted to A&E with symptoms after taking these substances.

“Any element of harm caused to anyone person is too much. What we are trying to do is take a proactive multiagency approach and raise the profile and explain it’s illegal, the harm it causes and the risks. They are, in some cases, very highly addictive.

“I have a great deal of confidence the new legislation will be extremely successful we are taking a front-foot approach. We have been given a number of options to deal with it robustly.”

Supt Staynings also said youth engagement officers will be visiting schools to explain the risks to educate pupils, carers and parents. As well as working with Erlestoke prison near Devizes, in which legal highs has in the past been an issue amongst prisoners.