Parklife boss Sacha Lord is on a mission to change the country's drink spiking laws - and says a u-turn on the decision to make spiking a specific criminal offence 'a curveball' he didn't expect.
Mr Lord - who is also co-founder of Warehouse Project - says the existing law from 1861 is now over 150 years old needs urgently updating.
“In 1861, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that our socialising was possibly slightly different to how it is now," he said.
READ MORE: 'More women and girls are being spiked in Greater Manchester - it urgently needs to be made a crime'
“You know, when we talk about a law in 1861, I didn't know what vaping was five years ago, so never mind 1861. These red tape rules - enough of it, they need dragging into this century, into this decade."
The End Spiking Now protest which took place over a year ago, saw “thousands” of protesters gather in St Peter’s Square in solidarity with the clubbing boycott that took place across the UK. The protest heard from several speakers about their personal experiences, demanding increased support for victims of spiking.
After attending the demonstration with the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, where women shared their stories of being spiked, Mr Lord said it was a “huge leap” when former Home Secretary Priti Patel announced plans to make spiking a specific offence.
“I was agreeing with Priti Patel - it still makes me surprised when I say that," he explained "She said you know what, we're going to make this a specific offence, and at that moment, it felt like those tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of girls and women that protested that night, they'd actually made this huge point and for the first time ever that had actually happened."
However, the current Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has reversed these plans with the Home Office saying they have concluded that “there is no gap in the law a new spiking offence would fill".
“I saw the headline last week that said there was a U-turn on Priti Patel’s announcements and Suella Braverman thinks the existing law is fine," Mr Lord went on. “I thought well…It's not fine, it really isn't fine. You know, there's so many cities across the UK that say let's introduce covering cups and look after your mates.
“Well, that is all great but when I go out on a night out I don't have to cover my cup. I don't have to be as aware as girls and women going out."
Lord took to Twitter to reach out to victims of spikings and opened his messages to the public for 24 hours, where he was inundated with people contacting him, sharing their experiences.
“I'll be honest, I just didn't even really think about it, I just said on my social media I'm going to open up my DMs - reach out if you've been spiked because I want to grasp the bull by the horns and do something about this.
“I cannot tell you the response that came out. It completely took me by surprise. I’ve not managed to respond to anyone yet across Instagram, across LinkedIn, on Twitter - there are hundreds and hundreds, if not over a thousand girls, women and men and boys as well who've come forward and said ‘we’ve been spiked’.”
Recent figures show that almost 5,000 incidents of spiking had been reported to police in the last year. The victims include women, girls and homosexual men. Lord says if they saw the messages from victims he’s being sent, they would see many aren’t reporting incidents of spiking for fear they weren’t being taken seriously.
“The most alarming thing is, the government is talking about 5,000 cases last year. Well, if they look at my private messages, then I'd say 90 to 95 per cent of people aren't actually reporting it because they feel like they're not going to be taken seriously when they go to the police because they feel they don’t have the power to do anything.
“My eyes have been really, really opened in the last 12 months and I'd say even more so in the last week - this is frightening. This is something that's not a rarity from looking at the responses I've had; this is quite common,” he said.
Mr Lord said spiking is “a sad, sorry, state of affairs,” and encouraged people, particularly men, to call it out if they see it happening.
“I think one thing that we did well in Greater Manchester and it was not me, it was Andy Burnham that said we - meaning me, men, lads, boys - we need to be calling ourselves out and we need to be calling our mates out who some people might know that they're doing it and saying enough's enough and actually shopping them to the authorities.
“However, I think mentality is changing now, I think, because it was so prevalent in the press. I think lads, boys, men have seen you know how dangerous this is. They've seen some very brave people who have come forward to tell the stories, how this can be life-changing to some people, you know, it happens,” he said.
One piece of advice Mr Lord offered to young people heading on nights out is to stick together.
“Going through all these responses so many said luckily my friends were there. I say to everybody that it is the simplest precaution you can take out on a night out.
“Look after your friends, be aware of your friends and if one of them goes astray, just pull them back into line and look after and go out together as a pack, as a group of mates,” he said.
As Mr Lord prepares to speak to members of parliament in the coming weeks and work with students to combat the rising issue, he says it is time to put pressure on the government to make a change.
“I'm going back on Monday, January 23, to meet again with the girls and women at Manchester University and say look, let's all get behind this," he said. We're not going to sit on our laurels, so much good work was done and then for it to be thrown away, it just doesn't feel right at all to me.
“We did make a commitment to Greater Manchester and I'm going to put my head above the parapet and if what we can do in Greater Manchester makes some difference to the UK then that's fantastic. I'm not gonna give up until I get the result that we need.”
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