HAMPSHIRE’S Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) is urging victims of spiking to report their experiences to police, amidst national calls for an inquiry into a recent spiking epidemic.

Police have this week been asked to urgently assess the scale of drink spiking at nightclubs and parties amid a rise in reports and claims some people have been drugged by injection.

Discussing the issue on Good Morning Britain on Thursday (October 21), PCC Donna Jones said: “I think it's very very difficult [to stop], even if you have got enhanced searches. If somebody has that criminal intent in their mind, to go out and drug somebody, whether it be something in their drink, or by injecting them in sonme easy, it’s almost impossible. You could conceal that in your shoe, in your sock, in your underwear perhaps. So I really think that this is a much wider societal issue, that we have people who will go out and prey on vulnerable people, students who have moved to a new city, to try and drug them and assault them in some way.”

She continued: “I think the solution here is reporting. Often where you’ve got nightclubs, pubs, bars and night time economy locations, there is lots of CCTV, but very often the victim wakes up in the morning not knowing what has happened, and then they feel slightly odd calling the police to say ‘I think something might have happened to me’.

“I would urge anybody, who can’t remember how they got home to the point they think they have been, either with a needle or drink, spiked, please report it to the police.

“The police need to know about these reports, that’s how we stop this.”

Home Secretary Priti Patel has asked forces for an update after some said they had seen more spiking incidents in recent months.

Police chiefs have also been tasked by the Commons Home Affairs Committee to urgently provide more information on their assessment of the scale of the problem after reports of incidents in several parts of the country, including Nottingham, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Groups from more than 30 universities around the UK have joined an online campaign calling for the boycott of nightclubs, with campaigners seeking “tangible” changes to make them safer, such as covers/stoppers for drinks, better training for staff and more rigorous searches of clubbers.

A petition launched last week to make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests on entry has already gained more than 120,000 signatures.

It comes as a University of Nottingham student told how she believes she was spiked with an injection during a night-out with friends.

Zara Owen, 19, from Surrey, said she blacked out soon after arriving at a venue last Monday, telling BBC Breakfast: “I know I didn’t drink as much as I usually would on a night-out this night, and the fact that I don’t remember anything is terrifying for me because this is something that is a very rare occasion to me.

“I’ve never suffered with memory loss and then the next morning… I woke up with a really painful leg.

“I found a pin prick in my leg which was the epicentre of all pain. It made me unable to walk and I was limping around.

“As a young person who’s at university, I’m hearing stories of people who have been to nightclubs and they have been injected. I have heard stories of someone having it through their hand or through their back, so this kind of gave me an idea this had happened to me.”