USE of the hallucinogenic drug LSD has almost doubled among young people since 2007, drug trends research shows.
And the percentage of regular drug users who also use LSD has also risen dramatically, said the director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, Michael Farrell.
Nearly half of all regular ecstasy users in NSW who were surveyed by the centre this year said they had also used LSD in the past six months.
Professor Farrell said the data on ecstasy users tended to reflect patterns of drug use among younger people, particularly those who were already frequent users of other drugs such as tobacco or alcohol.
He said there were several views as to why the use of LSD could have increased.
''One of the things may be that it is more fashionable and [more] availability could be another,'' he said. ''There has been more of it around.''
It was also popular at some music festivals, he said.
But so far statistics from emergency rooms and psychiatric facilities had not shown any increase in treatment for LSD-related problems.
Yesterday a Gold Coast mother was charged with endangering a child after her four-year-old apparently swallowed LSD.
The 23-year-old mother called an ambulance on Monday, after her daughter swallowed what she believed was LSD. The ambulance took her daughter from their Coombabah home to the Gold Coast Hospital, where doctors alerted police.
The girl was in a serious but stable condition yesterday, police said.
The woman is facing one charge of endangering a child by exposure and has been granted bail to appear in Southport Magistrates on November 29.
Tests were still being run to determine exactly what the child had swallowed.
According to the 2010 National Household Survey data 1.4 per cent of the Australian general population aged 14 years and above had used hallucinogens in the past 12 months, compared with only 0.6 per cent in 2007. Recent use by 20- to 29-year-olds had also doubled in that period, from 2.1 per cent to 4.6 per cent.
The short-term effects of both LSD and naturally occurring hallucinogens include vivid perceptual distortions, a distorted sense of time and place, sweating and/or chills, the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre said.
