A Tauranga woman who recently lost her son is mounting a campaign to ban legal highs in New Zealand.

Katie Bayliss' 23-year-old son Russell Harley Pataka, known as Harley to friends and family, died suddenly last Monday. His death has now been referred to the Coroner.

Katie Bayliss with a photo of her late son Harley Pataka.

The Facebook page wanting to ban synthetic cannabis.

Katie, who moved to Christchurch five months ago, travelled to Tauranga in a state of shock to attend his funeral on Friday.

'We had his funeral on Friday at the crematorium in Pyes Pa and it was packed. I can't say how many people attended but it was full. He had a lot of friends.

'We are all coping. Struggling with it and just trying to get back to some sort of normal life.”

Harley grew up in Tauranga attending Brookfield Primary and Otumoetai College before going on to work for a local furniture removal company.

Katie says he was always an up-beat young man who had no history of mental illness. But Katie believes Harley, just like his friends, had been smoking synthetic cannabis prior to his death.

'I've known these boys since they were in primary school and they told me they wanted to stop, but they can't get off it [synthetic cannabis].”

Katie says she began getting messages from people about a week before Harley died with concerns about his state of mind. She was told by friends Harley had been smoking synthetic cannabis for the last three months.

'Very regularly our friends have told us he was hearing voices, focusing on negative stuff in his life. He was always such a positive person, also he had become irrational.”

Katie had spoken with Harley the weekend before his death and says he seemed fine.

'During his funeral, I talked to a lot of his friends and they expressed the fact that a lot of them smoked synthetic cannabis.”

Katie believes there is little help available in the community for people addicted to legal highs and more support needs to be offered.

After saying goodbye to her son last week, Katie is now on a mission to have legal highs banned in NZ and has since started a Facebook page – Ban Synthetic Cannabis Nz Wide.

'I have thrown myself into this and it has been time consuming.”

The page gained 154 likes within the first hour of being created, and 24 hours later has more than 15,000.

'I want to get the message out there for everybody and our page has got a lot of support. We have reached 15,000 likes now. We were thinking we would be lucky to reach 10,000.

'It's amazing how many of the people who have ‘liked' the page are actually users. People who are using synthetic cannabis are backing it as well. Some of the stories on the page are pretty sad.”

Visit the Facebook page here.

The next step is to begin a petition to make psychoactive substances illegal and present it to Parliament, says Katie.