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| Rise in legal highs is fuelled by drug prohibition | Rise in legal highs is fuelled by drug prohibition |
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| Most people who grew up in the 70s, 80s and the 90s – and even those who took drugs during that time – have no idea what is going on in today's drugs market. Forget the acid flare and dope fug of the 70s, the twitchy glamour of coke, the grim arrival of crack and the cheap smack era of the 80s – even the benign ecstatic burst of acid house: today's ever-changing drug culture is different: digital and massively distributed. | Most people who grew up in the 70s, 80s and the 90s – and even those who took drugs during that time – have no idea what is going on in today's drugs market. Forget the acid flare and dope fug of the 70s, the twitchy glamour of coke, the grim arrival of crack and the cheap smack era of the 80s – even the benign ecstatic burst of acid house: today's ever-changing drug culture is different: digital and massively distributed. |
| The news from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) that there are 280 new legal drugs on sale in Europe will alarm some, intrigue many, and surprise no one that has been watching the development of the online trade in new drugs for the last few years. The numbers themselves tell a simple story: there are now more drugs on sale than the 234 banned by the 1961 and 1971 UN conventions. Moves to ban new drugs simply inspire chemical innovation that sidesteps the law. | The news from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) that there are 280 new legal drugs on sale in Europe will alarm some, intrigue many, and surprise no one that has been watching the development of the online trade in new drugs for the last few years. The numbers themselves tell a simple story: there are now more drugs on sale than the 234 banned by the 1961 and 1971 UN conventions. Moves to ban new drugs simply inspire chemical innovation that sidesteps the law. |
| Ask a police officer which of these is legal: AMT, 6-APB, 25I-NBOME, 5F-AKB-48 or ETOH. All of them, and most towns now have a shop selling them, in some form or other. (The last one is booze, the world's deadliest legal high that kills 320,000 young people aged 15-29 worldwide every year, or 9% of deaths in that age group). | Ask a police officer which of these is legal: AMT, 6-APB, 25I-NBOME, 5F-AKB-48 or ETOH. All of them, and most towns now have a shop selling them, in some form or other. (The last one is booze, the world's deadliest legal high that kills 320,000 young people aged 15-29 worldwide every year, or 9% of deaths in that age group). |
| Beyond the high street, there are 700 websites in the EU alone selling these drugs and many dozens of others by post. If we can't prevent container-loads of cocaine and cannabis entering every year, good luck to the Royal Mail or any other qualified provider that takes over post privatisation as they scan the 70m pieces of mail in the UK each day for the packets of drugs secreted among them. | Beyond the high street, there are 700 websites in the EU alone selling these drugs and many dozens of others by post. If we can't prevent container-loads of cocaine and cannabis entering every year, good luck to the Royal Mail or any other qualified provider that takes over post privatisation as they scan the 70m pieces of mail in the UK each day for the packets of drugs secreted among them. |
| But it's seldom reported what these new drugs are, what they do, and who is taking them, and why. Is no journalist curious? I was, and decided to find out. The simple answer is that most of these drugs act as stand-ins for MDMA (more commonly known as ecstasy), cannabis, LSD and mushrooms containing psilocybin (commonly known as magic mushrooms). The latter three drugs have no recorded cases of toxicological fatalities. | But it's seldom reported what these new drugs are, what they do, and who is taking them, and why. Is no journalist curious? I was, and decided to find out. The simple answer is that most of these drugs act as stand-ins for MDMA (more commonly known as ecstasy), cannabis, LSD and mushrooms containing psilocybin (commonly known as magic mushrooms). The latter three drugs have no recorded cases of toxicological fatalities. |
| Ecstasy can and does kill – and those deaths could be reduced if the market was regulated and controlled, say doctors. Between 2006-2010 in the UK, ecstasy featured, in conjunction with other drugs, on an average of 35 death certificates a year, says the Office for National Statistics. The average number of deaths in which ecstasy was the only substance present over the same period is 18, with the lowest number of deaths at five per year. | Ecstasy can and does kill – and those deaths could be reduced if the market was regulated and controlled, say doctors. Between 2006-2010 in the UK, ecstasy featured, in conjunction with other drugs, on an average of 35 death certificates a year, says the Office for National Statistics. The average number of deaths in which ecstasy was the only substance present over the same period is 18, with the lowest number of deaths at five per year. |
| That's out of a weekly user base of at least 400,000, according to the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales. That's over 20m pills a year, presuming each user takes just one pill each – which many do not. And though each of those deaths are brutally tragic (and many hundreds of times more likely to be reported than deaths from tranquillisers, alcohol, or butane gas abuse) that toll could be reduced in a controlled and regulated market, say Adam Winstock and David Nutt. | That's out of a weekly user base of at least 400,000, according to the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales. That's over 20m pills a year, presuming each user takes just one pill each – which many do not. And though each of those deaths are brutally tragic (and many hundreds of times more likely to be reported than deaths from tranquillisers, alcohol, or butane gas abuse) that toll could be reduced in a controlled and regulated market, say Adam Winstock and David Nutt. |
| Drug users are being exposed to significant and avoidable risks by a combination of poor policy and a lack of any real enforcement combined with zero quality control. This year in the north-west of England, up to 10 young people have bought cheap ecstasy pills and later died in agonising convulsions as they overdosed on PMA; a deadly substance passed off as MDMA in pill form. Is it any wonder some are looking for legal alternatives? | Drug users are being exposed to significant and avoidable risks by a combination of poor policy and a lack of any real enforcement combined with zero quality control. This year in the north-west of England, up to 10 young people have bought cheap ecstasy pills and later died in agonising convulsions as they overdosed on PMA; a deadly substance passed off as MDMA in pill form. Is it any wonder some are looking for legal alternatives? |
| There is a solution, but it's just not one likely to be meet with much approval from either the prohibitionists or the legalisers. But this is a time for pragmatism. I visited a taxpayer-funded ecstasy pill-testing laboratory in Utrecht this year. Users arrive at the clinic, hand their drugs to a trained professional who tests them for impurities, then gives them back with a calculation of their contents and contaminants – though in the Netherlands there is little to no contamination and hardly any market in legal highs. Staff told me that 99% of all pills in the Netherlands contain MDMA. There are test centres in every major town. The knowledge that a user can have their drugs tested keeps Dutch dealers honest – and the drug supply chain purer than elsewhere in the EU. | There is a solution, but it's just not one likely to be meet with much approval from either the prohibitionists or the legalisers. But this is a time for pragmatism. I visited a taxpayer-funded ecstasy pill-testing laboratory in Utrecht this year. Users arrive at the clinic, hand their drugs to a trained professional who tests them for impurities, then gives them back with a calculation of their contents and contaminants – though in the Netherlands there is little to no contamination and hardly any market in legal highs. Staff told me that 99% of all pills in the Netherlands contain MDMA. There are test centres in every major town. The knowledge that a user can have their drugs tested keeps Dutch dealers honest – and the drug supply chain purer than elsewhere in the EU. |
| In 1986, amid cries of disbelief from her party, Margaret Thatcher authorised needle exchanges for injecting heroin users and in a single move, cut HIV rates to some of the lowest in Europe, contrasting sharply with countries that do not offer clean needles to users. It is impossible to imagine the timid David Cameron attempting such a radical move – even as his skin singes on the ecstasy-drenched island of Ibiza. | In 1986, amid cries of disbelief from her party, Margaret Thatcher authorised needle exchanges for injecting heroin users and in a single move, cut HIV rates to some of the lowest in Europe, contrasting sharply with countries that do not offer clean needles to users. It is impossible to imagine the timid David Cameron attempting such a radical move – even as his skin singes on the ecstasy-drenched island of Ibiza. |
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