Festival Light Bulb Moment on Legal Highs

On Monday (5th May), a group of more than 25 UK festivals in the UK including Glastonbury, T in the Park, Bestival and Global Gathering participated in a digital blackout of their homepages to highlight the dangers of so-called ‘legal highs’.

From 9am for 24 hours, visitors to their websites were met with a black screen and a grey light bulb image alongside the statement: ‘Don’t be in the dark about legal highs’ and could then click through to find out more.

The campaign was organised by the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) and a key focus was to raise awareness and dispel the misconception that ‘legal’ equates to ‘safe’.

AIF Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman Ben Turner said: “Legal highs are a serious concern for any festival organiser and the issue is only going to get bigger”.

Turner continued: “Banning it at our festivals is only part of the battle however, we need to make fans aware of the dangers of legal highs and help them make safer choices when having fun on-site”.

The complete list of festivals participating was: Glastonbury, Bestival, T in the Park, Sonisphere, Secret Garden Party, Parklife, Global Gathering, Lovebox, We Are FSTVL, 2000Trees, Eden Sessions, ArcTanGent, Kendal Calling, Festibelly, Blissfields, Truck, Brownstock, Y Not, Tramlines, Shambala, Belladrum Tartan Heart, Leefest, Nozstock, Hebridean Celtic Festival, Wakestock and Glasgow Summer Sessions.

The combined festival’s audiences added up to ¾ of a million and organisers have estimated that the message reached at least 8.9m people through activity on Twitter alone.

‘Legal Highs’, which mimic the effects of illegal drugs, appear to be an escalating problem in the UK- A report in 2013 by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed an 80% increase of deaths related to legal highs, from 29 to 52 year on year and The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction recently identified over 280 substances not covered by law.

Find out more in this report from The Guardian and at AIF’s website.