Police have carried out a series of raids on shops selling so-called legal highs following a newspaper campaign against the sale of the substances.

The KM Group launched its campaign for a ban on the sale of legal highs following a series of high-profile incidents in the county, including the death of a young man who had taken synthetic cannabis.

Kent Messenger reporter Kiran Kaur and kmfm news editor Nicola Everett subsequently handed a dossier to Home Office minister Norman Baker at the House of Commons, which will be fed into a government review which could see sweeping changes to the UK’s drug laws.

And this week the campaign stepped up a gear on Monday when 18 shops across Kent selling legal highs were raided by police and trading standards officers from Kent County Council.

The KM Group mobilised its reporting team to have reporters and photographers stationed at the shops as they were simultaneously raided.

Police took away around 1,300 items for testing and are expected to apply to the courts to have them destroyed.

Legal highs bypass existing drug laws by being sold as ‘not for human consumption’ and are often advertised as plant food or research chemicals.

They are designed to flout drug rules by possessing chemical compositions that differ from those already prohibited but are able to mimic the effects of other drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy.

Ian Gilmore, Medway Council Trading Standards Officer, said: “We want the shops to know that we are prepared to take robust enforcement action to ensure they are operating within the law.

“These are not legal highs, they are lethal highs.”

Speaking after the visits, Karen Audino, whose son Jimmy Guichard, 20, died after taking synthetic cannabis believed to have been bought in a shop in Chatham, said she welcomed the move.

She said: “Anything that protects people and stops families like mine from being torn apart by these so called legal highs is a good thing.”