A BOLTON councillor is calling for further investigations to be carried out into the purchasing of drugs on the dark web.

Harper Green councillor Susan Haworth will bring a motion before a meeting of the full council tomorrow which aims to endorse a coroner’s decision to contact the home secretary over the dangers of the dark web — a collection of websites that are not accessible by normal means and are regularly used to purchase illegal items such as drugs.

The motion comes after the inquest into the deaths of brothers Torin and Jacques Lakeman, aged 19 and 20, who were found dead in a room in The Grapes Hotel in Stoneclough in December after taking ecstasy purchased on the dark web.

After the inquest, Bolton Coroner Alan Walsh wrote to the home secretary, Theresa May, urging her to look more closely at the issue.

Cllr Haworth will ask her fellow elected members to vote to urge the council’s new chief executive Paul Najsarek to also write to Mrs May, expressing the authority’s support for further investigations into the dark web.

Her motion will also look at the wider issue of drug-related deaths and serious harm in Bolton.

Cllr Haworth said: “The tragic case of the Lakeman brothers as well as several other drug-related deaths in the region have really highlighted these problems and I have been looking at the issue of deaths associated with contaminated drug batches.

“What I would like to see is the council backing innovative approaches and evidence-based work to keep people in Bolton safe.

“A big part of that is engaging with young people and using the best research possible to equip people to make the right decisions.

“I’m not sure everybody knows the different dangers of things like mixing drugs with alcohol or other drugs — it is about minimising the worst effects of drugs.”

Speaking about the issue of the dark web, she added: “We have to try and face how life is for people in 2015 and make policies relating to things like that sort of technology.”