GUERNSEY’S preemptive ban on the importation of legal highs has, according to Drug Concern, been a success. That one move has reduced by more than half the number of new contacts the agency has received from people experiencing difficulties with using the substances.

By any standards, that is good news, not least because of the £1.2m. cost of treating those experiencing harm as a result of trying the ‘highs’.

For a growing number of islanders, however, this success will be tinged with some concern: what else will young people try instead?

It is Guernsey’s draconian approach to illegal drugs that has driven young people into experimenting with the so-called legals, often with devastating consequences, as the £400,000 cost of buying in off-island treatment for them indicates.

What else is out there that the current ban on imports won’t currently catch? The fear is that it will be even worse and whatever success that the island has had in restricting supplies, it is doing little to curb demand.

And that, ultimately, will create conflict, whether it is in five or 15 years’ time or beyond.

The reason is that while islanders generally support the tough stance on drugs, the approach taken by the courts has been arrived at without any significant, visible public involvement. And as each year of local university graduates returns, so the number here for whom drugs are a way of life increases.

No, they may not even have tried them, but in the UK now it is only freshly minted £10 notes that have no trace of cocaine on them and the police attitude to possession of cannabis is relaxed, to say the least.

The other concern associated with the ban on legal highs is the law which has been invoked to engineer it.

The import legislation is not designed to be used to target groups of individuals or to be used for health or social engineering.

If it was, the same law would be invoked to ban the importation of alcohol and tobacco, which cause far more harm and cost to the public purse.

Home isn’t clamping down on that because drinks and smokes are the acceptable face of legal highs – and because youngsters on Spice have no political voice.