YOUNG people are risking their lives by injecting deadly legal highs.

Drugs experts today warned the new trend could cost lives.

Injecting the highs, which mimic the effects of illegal drugs, increases the risk of blood-borne infections, such as HIV and hepatitis, associated with needle sharing.

Teenagers who inject - rather than smoke or swallow pills - also put themselves at a greater risk of overdose.

Katy MacLeod, Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) National Training and Development Officer, today warned: "Don't start injecting."

Researchers believe injecting is the "most dangerous" way of taking legal highs.

An advice booklet, put together by SDF and NHS bosses, states: "When injecting the effects usually don't last as long, so people tend to inject more often.

"More injecting usually means more harm."

Since they first began to emerge in 2005, each year, the number of legal highs has expanded rapidly

More than 80 new designer drugs were identified last year, compared with 73 the year before, according to new research.

Ms MacLeod said: "Injecting any drug is the most dangerous way of taking it.

"There is a greater risk of overdose.

"Injectors can develop abscesses, ulcers, infections as well as blood borne viruses like hepatitis and HIV.

"The best advice is simple, don't start injecting or if you have started injecting, try an alternative.

"If people are determined to inject, they should make contact with their local needle exchange for information, advice and access to sterile equipment."

A recent report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction said there was "new evidence" of legal highs being injected.

The drugs can cause drowsiness, hallucinations, coma, paranoia, seizures and death.

We previously reported how shopkeepers who cash in on the legal high craze are being targeted by police.

Detectives will visit shops across the city , which are permitted to sell the substances by labelling them as "plant food" or "bath salts".

The crackdown was launched after a teenage boy was rushed to hospital on three consecutive days after taking toxic legal highs.

In 2012, there were 36 deaths in Scotland where legal highs were found during the toxicology report - three times the death rate from ecstasy.

Substances sold as legal highs fall outside the UK Government's misuse of drugs laws.

rebecca.gray@ eveningtimes.co.uk