WALKING DEAD
Horrifying footage shows how street drug ‘Spice’ turns homeless people in Manchester into zombies
Drug users passed out after smoking strain which is 'used when transporting koi carp to calm the down'
DISTURBING footage shows two homeless people in doped-up stupors after they smoked a new strain of the drug Spice.
One of the users is completely passed out as he leans up against a metal shutter and seems to be slipping to the ground.
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After the pair regained consciousness one of them admitted he had smoked a lethal strain of the former legal high Spice,
The paper has said there has been a surge in emergency call-outs to people in the city who have collapsed after smoking the synthetic drug.
When the Spice user standing up in the video came back round, he told reporters: "I have used (Spice) for about two years.
"It's cheap in bundles and they are going for daft prices.
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"Heroin users are saying it's the worst stuff going. It's dangerous."
Lewis Morris, 37, who has been homeless in Manchester since December last year, said: "It's madness. It's so cheap.
"Whoever is selling it they are making a lot of money on it. It's unreal.
"The new stuff is mixed with the tranquilliser they use when transporting koi carp to calm the down."
Julie Boyle, a support worker at the charity Lifeshare in Manchester, also said she has seen a rise in the number of people showing the symptoms of having smoked the drug.
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She says she found a woman at a tram stop in the city who had passed out after one drag of Spice.
Paramedics who arrived said they had been called out to 26 similar incidents in that day alone.
She said: "In the city centre there are people who just look like they are frozen, like the walking dead, sat in a catatonic state not moving.
"You wouldn’t even know they were alive – it’s like when you press pause on the telly.
"They don’t know where they are.
"I first noticed it probably the beginning of last week but then it’s intensified more as the week’s gone on."
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Representatives from Lifeshare estimate 95 per cent of Manchester's young homeless people smoke Spice.
She added: "Whatever’s going round the city centre at the moment is causing this. Every corner where there are beggars or homeless people hanging about, out of every six or so at least two will be catatonic.
"People are falling without even putting out their hands. They’re just falling face down, injuring their face or the back of their head. It’s horrible. It was bad enough before but this is another level."
Last month a drug addict was jailed after he torched an apartment block while high on Spice.
In January it was speculated that a prisoner who died in a Category B prison had smoked the drug.