There is a widespread attitude that counts against delaying a legislative response to emergent drugs. Many punters, especially younger ones, think that chemicals are safe unless proven otherwise - that is not the case.
The health fears over legal highs are focused on what could sensibly be called a “known unknown”. Professor John Ramsey is a forensic toxicologist who runs the UK’s database of drugs. During my interview with him, he pointed at one packet of highs and said “For example, I have no way of knowing that this one won’t cause birth defects.” Home Office and EU drugs policy adviser, Dr Les King, was also on message: “as a chemist I know that all chemicals are dangerous until proven otherwise.”
There is a precedent for such concerns over the safety of these substances. A heroin substitute called MPPP, first synthesised in 1947, was still doing the rounds during the designer drug craze of the 80s.
It was found that this drug often contained an impurity called MPTP that caused a permanent Parkinsons disease-like syndrome after just one dose. A slow government response increases the amount of exposure to substances that have the potential to greatly damage public health.
This is an even greater concern given the enthusiasm that young people are showing for legal highs. The end of the Observer’s two page spread describes teenagers buying legal highs with their parents. A quick look through the profiles of anyone posting comments on drug forums tells you how young some users are.
Recently, a disturbing new craze has evolved that demonstrates how deeply ingrained drugs culture has become. School kids are now snorting sherbert and crushed up love hearts in emulation of cocaine-users. You can see some youtube videos of this craze here and here.
In the absence of a proper method of regulating legal highs, and given the level of ignorance about them, legislative delays can only add to the risks of a hazardous pastime.
Matt Bardo
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 3:02 pm. Add a comment
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
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 1:50 pm. Add a comment
Legal highs are back in the press and this time they could cause a stir. Last week the Observer ran a double-page spread on them and it all seems to have been sparked by some noise from across the pond.
Salvia is a drug that comes from a the plant “Salvia Divinorum”, which is indigenous to Mexico. In days gone by, it was used in shamanic rituals. But today, it is popular among the youtube generation with those who are searching for altered mental states. When chewed or smoked salvia generates short-term but very intense hallucinogenic effects.
The drug has been known about for some time. You can watch BBC Inside Out’s 2007 take on it here. The Labour MP, John Mann has tried unsuccessfully to get the substance banned in the UK. Across the pond, the story has been quite different.
A campaign against salvia exploded in the US when a teenager called Brett Chidester killed himself in 2006. His mother blamed the drug for his death and has said that bringing salvia under regulation across the US will be her son’s legacy. The legislation that bans salvia has been dubbed “Brett’s Law”.
“My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has recently written to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [ACMD] requesting that it provide advice to Government on the availability and harms of psychoactive legal alternatives to illegal drugs, so called “legal highs”, with a particular focus on protecting young people. I fully anticipate that this work will include Salvia Divinorum. The Government’s position on its control will be informed by Advisory Council’s advice.”
The ACMD are due to report on their initial findings next month. If the ACMD do attempt to estimate the size and value of the UK legal high industry, it is likely to gain some column width.
Matt Bardo
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 5:34 am. Add a comment
A drug that is associated with rape, coma and death is not usually legal. Yet the only restriction on the UK trade in GBL is an EU Voluntary Monitoring list through which the chemical industry reports suspicious orders/transactions to the competent national authorities.
“The federal decision to ban GHB and GBL was taken only this year. Before that, GHB - but not GBL - was banned in a number of American states. Where it was banned, there was evidence that GBL was widely misused in its place. That is why it is important to tackle the two side by side.”
Then, in 2006, an Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs report on GBL recommended that it be brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act as a class C substance.A spokesman told me: “Having controlled GHB we felt it was necessary to control GBL.”
And in October 2008, Joan Ryan proposed a Bill to bring GBL under the Misuse of Drugs Act after she spoke to a constituent who had nearly died when her drink was spiked.
“I do not seek to deny that GBL has legitimate uses, and I accept that it is widely used as an industrial solvent. What I find difficult to believe, however, is that an industrial solvent being sold in bottles of 250 ml to private citizens in central London, with same-day delivery, is actually being used for legitimate industrial purposes. What needs to happen, and what my Bill provides for, is an end to the open market for GBL.”
Her bill went through a first reading last November but has since been delayed again. Today, GBL is a banned substance in America, Canada and Sweden but (still) remains legal in this country.
Matt Bardo
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 5:28 am. Add a comment
When our investigation into legal club drugs began, we read up on a drug called GHB. It’s a controlled substance in the UK, registered under the Misuse of Drugs Act as a class C drug - you might have heard it referred to as “liquid ecstasy”, “ liquid G” or “firewater”.
If you are caught in possession of GHB, you can be arrested. But a perfectly legal substance that will have the same effect is also available. It’s called GBL, it can be traded legally and last Wednesday, it killed a 21 year old student in Brighton.
GBL is an industrial solvent. It has a range of uses, appearing for example in nail varnish remover pads. But when ingested, it turns into GHB in the body. And that means it’s open to abuse as a legal equivalent of GHB.
Professor John Ramsey, who runs a national drug identification database called TICTAC Communications, is an expert in emergent substances. He said that for all intents and purposes, GBL and GHB are the same thing. In 2007 TICTAC figures revealed that more than half the doses of GHB being sold in nightclubs were in fact GBL.
At low doses, GHB/GBL cause euphoria, sociability and increased libido in users. At medium doses, they produce a strong hypnotic effect. At higher doses, they can cause coma and death. It is often smuggled around in drinks bottles. At TICTAC we saw several examples of what were ostensibly sports drinks, that actually contained GHB/GBL. One dose can be obtained for as little as 10 pence.
The Emergency Department at St Thomas’ Hospital, London treats many of those who have been poisoned by party drugs during a night out at Vauxhall’s clubs. According to one study listed by the ACMD report on GBL, of the 1119 patient presentations with poisoning, 158 (14%) were for GHB/GBL intoxication. That represents 38% of all drugs of abuse.
To obtain the desired effect, the dosage of GBL needs to be precisely administered – too much can kill, especially when it interacts with alcohol. To complicate this calculation even further, the concentration of GHB or GBL varies depending on what has been done to the drugs.
Because GHB/GBL is colourless, odourless and only has a mild salty taste, it is easily used to spike drinks. It has been widely linked to date rape.
This brilliant video from knowghb.org.uk shows the effects of GHB:
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
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 1:05 pm. Add a comment
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
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 10:33 am. Add a comment
Selling legal highs must currently be one of the most attractive business opportunities on the planet.It is such a simple idea. You start with the most addictive and profitable product there is – illegal drugs – and then you slightly tweak them so that your invention replicates their captivating effects and falls within the law.
To achieve this you need two things in your favour. You need slack drug laws to leave the door ajar and you need money to pay the clandestine chemists to do the tweaking and barge right through it.
In terms of the former, the legal high impresarios are onto a winner. Firstly, the complex nature of drugs means that it is entirely impossible for a government to make every mind-altering chemical compound illegal – there are just too many possible adaptations.
Governments also face an incredibly difficult catch-22 situation. If they act quickly to ban an up-and-coming drug, they are unlikely to have had the time to frame the legislation in a way that would cover the drug’s similarly effective relatives, yet if they act slowly in an attempt to implement a more thorough and wide-reaching law they will be criticised for dithering.
Even if some more stringent governments do get their act together, demand for mind-twisting chemicals is truly global and developing countries in particular are going to feel they have far more pressing concerns than addressing the complicated legal high minefield.
The money that is there to be made through legal highs is mind-blowing. The extraordinary margins means that there is now a virtuous or viscious cycle (depending on what side of the legal high divide you stand) developing. Drugs expert John Ramsey estimated that each legal high packet costs 20p to manufacture and when they can be sold for £10 it is no wonder that the tweaks the clandestine chemists are making are becoming increasingly sophisticated and effective.
The recent emergence of methylone and mephedrone is a great example of this. They are among the first drugs to sidestep the prohibitions on MDMA-style substances and all reports suggest their effects are closer than ever to that of ecstasy.
Remarkably little is known about who is behind this stunning piece of business opportunism. Ramsey speculated that the highs and packaging were made in China, whilst there have also been suggestions that New Zealand has been an origin of supply. It seems likely that companies such as Stargate International, who originate from down under, are behind at least some of the new releases onto the market.
All in all, while the risks and ethics of the products remain very much in the shadows, if you can find out who runs the show in the legal high business then you would be either moral or mad not to gather up everything you own and invest.
