‘Needle’ Spiking in UK Clubs — Epidemic or Hoax?

Patient Zero

Between October and December 2021, hundreds of young British girls were allegedly spiked via injection in Britain’s clubs and bars. Pedalled by both mainstream and social media, the wave of alleged spikings followed one reported case that seemingly sparked an avalanche of hysteria and paranoia. As reported by Fullfact.org, the first alleged attack of its type took place at Nottingham’s Pryzm nightclub on 11th October, and was related to the story of a 19-year-old university student named Zara Owen. 

According to Owen, she had entered the nightclub normally and made her way to the bar. All recollection of the night then ended for Zara. Waking up in her bed the next day, she stated that she was confused and could feel a sharp pain in her leg; a pain which she attributed to a needle. After looking at her leg more closely, she claimed to notice a pinprick and her suspicions were affirmed. Her confusion, and her lack of memory of the events of the proceeding evening, had been caused by drugs entering her body via injection in the leg by a third-party, likely a man. She shared her theory online to warn others of the potential dangers, and the story was quickly picked up by the media. 

Despite the spate of similar shocking stories to follow Owen’s alleged drugging, a thorough investigation into these cases came to a shocking result: it was all bulls***!

The Spread

In the ten days proceeding Zara’s alleged injection, online searches for ‘drink spiking’ in the UK had increased by over 800 per cent. In Nottingham alone, 15 additional reports of needle spiking were made by women, though only one case led police to identify an injury sufficient enough to be deemed “[possibly] consistent with a needle.” What followed was more articles and more claims of women being spiked by injection, with the media describing a very similar victim profile for each attack; young women between 18 and 22 years old, on a boozy night out, many of them young students. 

Of all the reported cases, all had been drinking, none of them had felt the injection, and none of them had otherwise been victimised, whether robbed, raped, or harassed. Some had diagnosed their supposed ‘spikings’ after finding a tiny red mark the day after their nights out, while others decided bruises on their bodies were consistent needle injections as they embarked on their quest to solidify their place at the ‘needle spiked club’. 

Their statements to the police and media echo each other:

“We were already anxious about going out because of the rise in spiking incidents.”

“I haven’t been able to go out since, and I’d usually go often.”

“I have no plans to go out again until the bars or police do something more about this.”

“Girls and women shouldn’t have to feel this way.” 

“I have a lot of people asking ‘where were you’ but it doesn’t make a difference, it’s happening absolutely everywhere.”

“We only had two drinks in one place and about six in another. I didn’t have that much to drink.”

“It’s happening so much, the number of people who have written to me saying the same thing has happened to them.” 

“I only knew I'd been spiked when I saw the videos.” 

“I woke up this morning and there’s a mark on my left arm from where I’ve obviously been injected with whatever it is.” 

Hysteria

As early as mid-October, Home Secretary Priti Patel had been pressing forces for an update on the matter, and police chiefs were tasked by the Commons Home Affairs Committee to urgently provide more information on their assessment of the scale of the problem after more incidents in several parts of the country, including Nottingham, Scotland, and Northern Ireland were reported. Several men were arrested (and promptly released) and punters were kept inside a nightclub for two hours for examination by police following allegations that two women had been spiked with needles. 

Groups from over 30 universities around the UK joined an online campaign calling for the boycott of nightclubs, with campaigners demanding changes to make them safer, including the introduction of covers/stoppers for drinks, better training for staff, and more rigorous searches of clubbers. Just two weeks after the first reported incident, a petition calling on the government to make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests on entry gained more than 131,000 signatures.

Of course, the hysteria around alleged needle spiking also increased the reporting and attention on good old-fashioned drink spiking, and, unsurprisingly, reactionary activism and virtue signalling. Durham University, following the launch of the #Don’tGetSpiked campaign, was promptly accused of ‘victim blaming’ for stating that “drink spiking is dangerous and something that you can prevent from happening to you and your friends.” This supposedly outrageous tweet, telling girls to protect themselves as the first order of precedence, led to Durham city MP Mary Foy’s announcement that “the #DontGetSpiked hashtag was certainly deeply misguided” and that “individuals perpetrating these crimes are abhorrent, and sadly this behaviour fits within a wider pattern of violence against women and girls which must be eradicated from our society.” 

The ‘epidemic’ of needle spiking then continued, and by mid-December Nottingham alone had seen 146 reports of alleged ‘needle spiking’. But despite nine men being arrested by the police for alleged injections, none were charged with a crime. 

Common Sense Kicks In

In January 2022, South Yorkshire Police’s Chief Superintendent Sarah Poolman reported that there had been a “significant reduction” in cases between November to December following a ‘steep rise’ in October. She went on to state:

“In December, 12 [people] made reference to an injection, of which only one had been confirmed by a medical professional … This is a strange phenomenon, frankly, that has evolved since October where normally we would see spiking associated with a further offence but we are seeing very little of that … That’s why I think there potentially is something that’s trending somewhere that’s caught the attention of individuals … Please do not construe that as we do not believe the victim, we absolutely know that something’s happened to these victims, we’re just not entirely sure what.”

It is unclear how they ‘know’ that “something [had] happened to the victims” if the blood tests and the investigations proved the contrary. It is conceivable that the police feel they have to #BelieveAllVictims despite knowing that most of these cases could likely be attributed to a cocktail of media-constructed hysteria and excessive alcohol consumption on the part of young people.

Then, on January 21st, the BBC reported that Police Scotland had found “no [identifiable] cases of spiking by injection.” Detective Chief Superintendent Laura McLuckie announced that no evidence was found to support the claims after forensic analysis identified no traces of drugs in the bloodstreams of the girls allegedly spiked in clubs. She did say, however: 

“There was clearly alcohol involved. There is clearly recreational drug use involved. … However, we don't have any identified cases of any spiking by injection in Scotland at this time.”

She went on to tell the Scottish Police Authority that the “significant increase in reporting” was “a result of the media and social media attention that it was given at that time.”

This outcome would not come as a surprise. According to experts Guy Jones, senior scientist at The Loop — a non-profit organisation focused on drug safety — and John Slaughter, a senior forensic toxicologist at Analytical Services International — which provides toxicological services, including forensic toxicology, to identify legal and illegal drugs and poisons — they had never come across or even heard of needles being used for spiking previous to the recent cases and stated that it would unlikely that perpetrators could replicate the method easily on a wider scale. Mr Slaughter said: 

“If someone is jabbed with a syringe then their reflex action is going to be to move away within a second or two … The opportunity for someone to actually inject enough drug from that syringe to have the effect, I would think, is fairly low. I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible, I'm just saying, in my opinion, it's unlikely.”

But what if spikings of this kind had happened and the drugs were not found in testing because the victims did not come forward immediately? Jones, also of drug testing company Reagent Tests UK, told Drivetime Radio Scotland that drugs which can be ejected from the system within 24 hours are “incredibly, incredibly difficult to administer subtly by injecting.” Meanwhile, according to Jones, drugs that can be injected tend to linger in the body for much longer. 

“We'd have a much higher chance of detecting them compared to conventional drink spiking incidents,” said Jones. 

The Moral of the Story?

We should be relieved by the fact that ‘needle spiking’ did not seem to occur in these cases. But how should we feel about the hundreds of young women and men who insisted that they had been a victim of a heinous crime? What does this say about claims of the more common ‘drink spiking’? What does it say about rape and sexual assault claims in the age of #MeToo? What does it say about everyday claims of violence and misogyny? How do we feel about people blaming the consequences of their own behaviour, such as drinking and recreational drug use, on others? Is this not a danger to society too?

Yes, some women indeed experience sexual assault, or worse. Yes, people who spike others should be thrown in jail and the key thrown away. But if we look at the data, it is clear that we do not in the UK have an epidemic of violence against women and girls. We have an epidemic of media created fear and panic, and the emotionally vulnerable are most likely to get infected. The only medicine to stop the spread of this madness is a return to common sense, fact-based evaluation, and a focus on evidence instead of feelings, hysteria, and social media.