A NEW shop in Winchester selling legal highs and ball-bearing guns has sparked outrage among local residents.

The site on Stockbridge Road has been taken over by a Southampton businessman, who signed the lease on Saturday and opened on Monday.

On sale are a range of brightly-coloured ball-bearing guns, T-shirts, rucksacks and belts, as well as a range of legal highs, bongs and pipes.

But locals have voiced concerns branding the synthetic drugs as dangerous.

“It’s not really what you want and legal highs are just not really appropriate,” said Pat Maguire, 51, of Walpole Road in Stanmore.

“It’s not good,” the alternative therapist added. “I’m into natural health and I work closely with medical professionals and they’ve seen people coming in being a bit psychotic.

“They don’t know the toxicity. They are new drugs and that’s what makes them dangerous. We don’t know the long-term effects; it’s ridiculous really.”

Mother-of-two Natalie Harvey, 43, of Spring Lane, Colden Common, said: “I just think it’s terrible that people have their heads in the sand about these things.

“I have a 14-year-old daughter and, even though I have brought [her] up well, I really worry about things like legal highs with peer pressure from friends. I watched a TV programme the other night about delivery service for legal highs (although not round here) I just can’t believe that they are opening a shop in Winchester.

“Kids can be so easily led these days by friends it is such a worry. I for one will be having another talk to my daughter about the dangers.

“Surely they need permission to open by the council or something; what are they thinking?”

In November Winchester City Council ordered trader Barbara Cooper to stop selling herbal highs at her shop in the Antiques Market at Kings Walk, threatening her with eviction if she continued.

But the owner of the small shop, that was until recently the Nibble cafe, who asked not to be identified, said he was a businessman simply selling a product and opened the shop off the back of some information from his existing clients in Southampton.

“I’ve been doing this now for about a year-and-a-half and opened up this place when I was told there was demand for it in Winchester by my customers,” he said. “We had to expand our business anyway, we had too much competition in Southampton and wanted to increase our market share.”

He said his company enforces a strict policy about selling to people aged under 18 and will ask for ID for anyone who looks younger than 25 for their guns, legal highs and associated paraphernalia.

“We’ll start at 18 but if there’s too much messing around then we’ll go to 21,” he added. “I’ve denied three people already.

“There are a lot of people selling it on the street and they’re selling it to minors. Its better I’m selling it here, in a controlled environment, with all the checks involved than picking it up from a street-seller. We do things properly.”

Winchester MP Steve Brine, who has campaigned in Parliament to raise awareness of the dangers of legal highs and has a shop not far from the new store, said: “This is a worry and I absolutely share the concerns about this new shop opening up. The location is a concern of course but whether it's hidden or highly visible misses the point that these psychoactive substances are seldom the harmless fun many people believe. They can be lethal and increasingly they are not even legal.

“We’ve done a great deal in recent years to ban new so-called ‘legal highs’ and the expert panel at the Home Office is now allowing us to develop proposals for a general ban. I have been in touch with Trading Standards to ask them to take an interest and would urge all parents to talk to their kids about the dangers here. I’ve met parents who’ve lost children this way and they are utterly broken.”