Drugs minister to appeal to Chinese for help in stopping spread of legal highs

[neversickanymore]

Drugs minister to appeal to Chinese for help in stopping spread of legal highs
Alan Travis
27 February 2014

The drugs minister, Norman Baker, is to appeal to the Chinese for help in curbing the spread of legal highs amid evidence of the marketing in Britain of the first synthetic substances to imitate the effects of heroin and morphine.

The approach to the Chinese and Indian governments, where many of the illicit labs producing what are officially termed "new psychoactive substances" sold online in Europe are based, comes after the first Home Office legal highs summit on Thursday brought together law enforcement, health and drugs experts.

More than 280 new synthetic substances not covered by the existing drug laws have been identified by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Many use chemical formula to imitate the effects of traditional illicit drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy and amphetamines.

A British system of temporary banning orders has already outlawed hundreds of these new legal highs and a forensic early warning system is used to monitor their availability in Britain.

Baker told the Home Office summit: "We've had a good response in this country through the temporary control orders we've had, and we're certainly ahead of other countries on that basis, but if you're having new substances created almost on a weekly basis then inevitably we're chasing after those substances. I want to see whether we can get ahead of those substances, rather than chasing after them."

Among those present were senior national crime agency and Metropolitan police officers, crown prosecutors, drug charities and leading psychiatrists. The participants included pharmacologist, Prof Les Iversen of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Paul Griffiths of the EU's drug monitoring agency and Harry Shapiro of DrugScope.

Baker said he hoped to have "frank and honest" discussions about curbing the illicit laboratories' activities with source countries such as China and India at next month's UN commission on narcotic drugs.

The Liberal Democrat minister said there was emerging evidence that the chemists in south-east Asia were trawling the internet for old pharmaceutical research papers for new drugs "for leisure use" that had been abandoned because they had not been regarded as safe by the original chemists.

Baker also said he had asked the expert panel at the summit to look at controls on the operation of "head shops" on Britain's high streets that sell the new psychoactive substances as if they were legal. He also voiced concerns that their marketing was now professional and matched many legal products, giving the impression they were legal.

He said: "Rather than giving the impression that what head shops are selling is harmless, we need to consider whether or not there are messages and ways of dealing with them."

Baker said his concerns over legal highs had escalated the more he looked into the matter. He said: "In particular, I am concerned by the shocking emergence of new substances designed to have similar effects to heroin and synthetic opiates, one of which was reported last month to have caused the death of Jason Nock. I have already asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to provide advice on these matters."

The substance involved in Nock's death was AH-7921, also known as doxylam, which is said to have about 80% of the potency of morphine and has been associated with three deaths in Britain and 15 across Europe.

The expert group is to be asked to report within the next two or three months on what more can be done, including possibly new legislation, to tackle the problem. It will be published at the same time as the Home Office study looking at international drug laws. This has covered a large number of response from Ireland's blanket ban of all legal highs to New Zealand's approach of regulating their use.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/drugs-minister-appeal-chinese-government-legal-highs

 

[S.J.B.]

Why in the hell should China care about Britain's drug problem?

AH-7921? Just wait until people catch on to the potential of bromadol...

 

[CLICKHEREx]

As I remember it, Britain not only didn't help China with its opium problem, but sent an army to protect their businessmen selling it to the Chinese addicts, so why should the Chinese govt. help the Brits out now?
And opium was a "legal high" in those days, as was cocaine and cannabis!

 

[spacejunk]

Considering how much the West have been pissing China off lately, I hope they raise the proverbial two fingers.

How about treating your "drug problem", western countries - rather than acting like every preventative measure will cure society's ills.
Every step of prohibition seems to escalate the potential dangers associated with drug use and winds up being used as propaganda to further increase this "war on drugs" stance.

 

[Clocktower]

As long as there is a market, there will be suppliers.

 

[MagickalKat777]

To be frank, I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. Hopefully nobody gets publicly executed this time around like they did with the ketamine exports when the pressure got put on the government to stop it.

 

[omnipresenthuman]

yea, China historically has no reason to help the Brits out here...after the TWO Opium Wars in the 19th century, Britain has a lot of bad karma as a country (of course...America's not exactly pure either, but the Britain-China thing goes back centuries)

 

[exists]

Every step of prohibition seems to escalate the potential dangers associated with drug use and winds up being used as propaganda to further increase this "war on drugs" stance.

Yep, it's a classic example of creating or worsening a problem just to prove a point.

Is it too much to ask to have the *safest* drugs legalized or decriminalized in order to reduce the harm done to society? Is that really such an illogical plan? People aren't going to stop doing drugs, not in this lifetime.

 

[Si Dread]

I am certain China's economic needs will be her first priority & if it proves profitable to toe the line, China will toe the line. If not, she will not. Certainly, there is no moral obligation to China to assist in dealing with Britains "drug problem" & if there's money to be made selling perfectly legal psychoactive compounds to British retailers the practice will likely continue.

It is however an illusion that the innovation & technology to produce new drugs, or older drugs in new ways, is somehow purely Chinese. Research Chemicals often come from China, but the expertise that "invents" new chemicals is as likely to come from Surfers Paradise, Dundee or Bogota as it is from Shanghai.

I hate to say it, but clamping down on the flashy advertising representations of Research Chemicals as "Legal Highs" is a very, very good idea. Taking potentially risky RC's out of the hands of both High Street Head shop retailers & the young people who frequent them is desirable while the market is saturated with compounds with unknown short & long term health risks. Deaths due to "Legal Highs" in the UK in the last year that records were available showed a huge leap & this trend is not likely to change unless more is done to keep powerful, ill-researched chemicals out of the hands of idiots & people who sell to them. Everybody deserves a chance to learn from their mistakes, but when young people make big mistakes with powerful drugs, it's usually their last!

Somehow, a legal Research Chemical scene should be developed in Britain &, somehow, the Legal High scene should be shut down. I cannot see how either of these ideals can be achieved whilst illegal drugs remain illegal.