AIF Websites Launched Black Out Monday vs. Legal Highs

London, UK- Independent festivals’ websites were blacked out May 4, Monday as part of its 24-hour campaign against legal highs and its dangers.

The London-based trade association representing UK music festival organizers, Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), together with Angelus, a charity against legal highs, were launching and organizing the black out.

From 9 am, the sites displayed a digital roulette wheel saying, “You Could Lose the Lot on Legal Highs” in order to emphasize the unpredictable risk of using such substances.

According to sources, more than 40 events, including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, T in the Park, Isle of Wight, Bestival, Parklife and Lovebox, a few major festivals, would join the much-anticipated event.

Part of the blackout page, an infographic revealing key advice, facts and statistics about new psychedelic substance was shown on the websites.

A few highlights the infographic revealed are important details about laughing gas, hippy crack or nitrous oxide after news about its popularity among the youth and a letter of advice going out to the organizers from the Home Office, instructing them to act versus new psychedelic substances that are usually consumed in festival venues.

According to General Manager Paul Reed of the Association of Independent Festivals, the dangers of NPS were still of great concern to their members.

Following the success of such campaign last year, they felt it was important to retackle it this year and wanted summer events to be enjoyable and safe surroundings for music festival fans.

Jan King, Angelus CEO, said that there were more than one hundred of new substances introduced and identified last year and the wide range of products changed fast with different ingredient combinations, resulting to varying effects. And concluded that the only thing that remained the same was insufficient education of the public on how harmful the so-called legal highs were.

Last year, the event, which was participated by 20 music festivals, attracted international media attention, reaching more than nine million people on social media.

Photo Credit: Name PR