Behind the Headlines

Bolting horses, slamming doors

When Dr Alexander Shulgin (above) wrote his 1991 book about falling in love while dosed up on phenethylamines with his wife, he encapsulated the image of the clandestine chemist, a glorious hippy, perfecting his chemical recipes.

The Government didn’t like it one bit. The fuss caused by Shulgin’s book led to 36 substances being banned in the UK in 1998, even though there was little evidence that they were being widely used.  The then Home Secretary, George Howarth, said: “These measures will slam the stable door firmly shut before the horse has bolted.” You can read the report here. 36 doors might have slammed loudly but the horse was long-gone.

The basics of what Shulgin advanced continues today - the tweaking of chemicals to make the highs legal. But sparked by the internet, it has become a global industry. The new breed of legal highs are well researched and, experts say, increasingly potent.

Legal highs have traditionally been sold through “headshops”, shopping outlets that specialise in the sale of drugs and drug paraphernalia. There are said to be more and more of them appearing in UK cities. But one of the biggest cultural shifts is the internet.

An entire online community has emerged in which you can learn about the latest drugs. Check out the Bluelight forum or erowid.org. There are even facebook groups devoted to the next big chemical thing.  Some new substances on the scene today stand to change the nature of drug dealing. Increasingly legal highs are not just imitators of illegal drugs, they are respected recreational drugs in their own right.

The recent arrival of Mephedrone, or methylmethcathinone, is a good example. It has only been on the monitors’ lists for around the last year but already it is making a big impact.  Druglink, the magazine of DrugScope, is asking whether Mephedrone is the future of drug-dealing. 27 year-old Londoner, Dave said: “I pretty much stopped buying coke and pills and crystal [MDMA] once I found meph. I’d just bulk order and send off the payment and the package would arrive a few days later.”  The old type of drugs-regulation cannot be applied to this new world - and a new approach is needed to regulate their sale, without necessarily making them illegal.

Matt Bardo

Mephedrone and methylone’s legal status and do they signal a global drug law divide?

Full names

Methylone - 3,4-methylenedioxymethcathinone

Mephedrone - 4-Methylmethcathinone

These drugs are new on the scene and are the result of the rising flow of legal high money funding increasingly intelligent clandestine chemists.

Most countries have done nothing to prohibit these two specific drugs.  The countries where these drugs are illegal are the ones that have general generic drug laws that the emergent drugs have automatically fallen under.

The Law - Mephedrone

Mephedrone could be considered prohibited, due to the broad substance analogue laws, in USA, Australia and New Zealand. While in 2008, after several alleged incidents, which included deaths among teenagers, Sweden framed specific legislation making the sale of mephedrone illegal. As far as our research tells us, no other country prohibits the sale or use of mephedrone.

The Law - Methylone

Methylone is a very similar story. The US, Sweden and the ANZAC countries’ wide-reaching laws prohibit the drug as either an “ampetamine analogue” or as “substantially similar” to methcathinone. Again, as far as we can tell, no other countries legislate against the drug.

A drug law divide?

This difference in the nature of the drug laws in different countries and areas could show how shifting political allegiances and differences permeate so many different areas of public life.

The US, the UK, New Zealand and Australia are historically close allies. All four have traditionally aimed for generic, wide-reaching and long lasting drug laws that cover all the analogous families of prohibited drugs.

European countries have historically had drug-specific laws on a case by case basis - shown by its recent specific recommendations on BZP.

While the UK has prevaricated over BZP, the failure of its laws to cover mephedrone or methylone may signal that as the UK has moved towards Europe politically, its drug legislation is making a similar shift.

George Arbuthnott

BZP – The law, the loophole and the delay

Full name: Benzylpiperazine

The Law

BZP is not controlled in this country under the Misuse of Drugs Act - so possession is legal.

In 2007 BZP distribution and vending was banned under the Medicines Act. Danny Lee-Frost, Head of Operations at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said: “Producers and sellers 
must now stop marketing all products containing BENZYLPIPERAZINE and “PIPERAZINE BLEND” in the UK with immediate effect and must cancel all advertising and promotion including internet promotion and sales. People should not take these pills as there are considerable health risks.”

Now only licensed pharmacies selling piperazine-containing medicines for human use can legally distribute piperazines in the UK.

 The Loophole

If the packaging says that the product should be used for plant feeder then no license is required as it is not being marketed at human consumption.

The Delay

The dangers of BZP were first systematically recorded in New Zealand in 2005. On the 4th March 2008 the results prompted the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) to request member countries to place BZP under control within a year. The France had complied within a month of that announcement but more than one year on we are still waiting for the UK government to act.

George Arbuthnott

How widespread is BZP and what are its effects?

BZP is first recorded as being used recreationally in the early 1990’s in California. Early reports said it gave “a loved up-feeling with a trippy edge”.

View Where to buy a legal high in a larger map

The drug traveled widely before and into the new millennium and was spectacularly well received in New Zealand, which by 2007 was seeing 5 million pills sold each year. The European legal drugs market was slower to catch on but by 2008 it was popular enough in the UK for news that BZP was in the process of being made illegal to be received by comments in forums such as:
“Why the F**K do they take away ANYTHING that makes this place anywhere near worth living in…?”
Considering the extent of BZP’s worldwide use, there have been remarkably few studies into whether its effects are dangerous. The most comprehensive study yet was carried out at Christchurch Hospital, New Zealand in 2005, which, for six months, recorded and examined the 61 people who presented themselves at their Emergency Department admitting to party pill use. The findings were stark.
Patients with mild to moderate toxicity experienced insomnia, anxiety, nausea, vomiting, palpitations, dystonia, and urinary retention. 14 recorded toxic seizures were recorded with two patients suffering life-threatening toxicity with status epilepticus and severe respiratory and metabolic acidosis.
The results were however dismissed by Matt Bowden, the founder of party pill multinational Stargate International, who claimed that over 20 million pills containing BZP had been consumed in New Zealand with no available record attributing deaths or lasting injuries to the drug.
He rejected the two BZP-attributed deaths (one in New Zealand and one in Zurich in 2003) observing that they had both involved the user combining BZP with MDMA, which meant that it was uncertain the exact role the drug played.
All in all, as drugs expert John Ramsey pointed out, the lack of information and studies means that it is extremely difficult for drug authorities to come to an authoritative stance on BZP. And it is clear that that empirical haziness has caused the current controversy.
George Arbuthnott