The Home Office Police Research Group has revealed a disturbing practice growing in rural communities, of young people injecting alcohol as a means of achieving a quick high. They are exploiting the ready availability of alcohol as opposed to illegal drugs. There is evidence of children as young as 14 injecting spirits, or even cider and beer, intravenously. The result is instant drunkenness since this method makes alcohol seven times more powerful than when taken as a drink. Around 10ml of whisky, less than half a measure, is sufficient to put someone over the drink-drive limit if injected.

Injecting alcohol can introduce bubbles into the blood stream, blocking the flow to the brain and inducing a stroke. It is also very easy to inject a lethal dose, especially as control of quantity is unlikely to be a priority with users of the technique.

Workers in alcohol rehabilitation have encountered this phenomenon before, but usually in people in the advanced stages of dependency and not with any marked frequency. "It is madness to even think about about injecting alcohol," said Dr John Connolly, of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Strathclyde University.

In a recent article, The Sunday Times interviewed a number of young people who had experimented. Lindsay, 18, a history student at Newcastle, injected bourbon whisky in order to win a drinking competition. "I wanted to show I was madder than anyone else." Presumably she succeeded.

The Home Office researchers chose Driffield in Humberside as a representative rural town. They found that drug abuse in general is increasing in such communities, as it has in cities. Although experts in the field say that the number of people injecting alcohol remains small, they are fearful of an increase.

:jointsmile: <- I'll stick to that!