poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Paranoia, paralysis but no risk of prosecution: welcome to the world of legal highs
Whatever London club owners say in public, in private many will admit that drugs keep their dance floors full and their businesses in profit.
Drugs — especially club drugs — are good for business. Whether it’s cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis or ketamine, that chemical menu stayed pretty fixed for two decades until around 2009, when mephedrone, known as meow-meow, appeared.
It was cheap, it worked and it was convenient. It could be bought online and delivered, like books from Amazon. Most significantly, it was legal and its appearance marked a tipping point — many people started looking for previously unheard-of highs.
Drugs professionals call these new substances “novel psychoactive substances”. Internet drug geeks call them “research chemicals”, since many were designed for use in legitimate scientific research. Those who sell them and those who want them banned call them “legal highs”. I call them something far simpler: Drugs 2.0 — a term that for me reflects the complexity of this new chemical reality, and the role of the web in it.
When I started to research my new book I wanted to pin down the origins of this new drug culture, what these strange new chemicals do, and analyse what this shift in the market means for police, politicians, parents and health professionals. I also wanted to address the question: why take new drugs that no one knows anything about?
In a Farringdon bar I meet 20-year-old student John (not his real name) to talk about his drug use. He says he’s recently been using legal highs and explains that his decision is partly driven by fear of arrest. His latest poison is called 6-APB, a drug that is chemically similar to MDMA — ecstasy — with one key difference: it’s legal.
“I started using legal highs again last year. I used mephedrone when it first came out, but I stopped when it was banned. Some of the new ones are almost as good as a decent pill, better, sometimes. I stopped doing Charlie [cocaine] because it seemed so expensive. The comedowns are bad, though, and I worry about what’s in them,” he says.
The chemicals are made in China, where they are legal, and imported to the UK through specialist websites. John reads online messageboards to see what the new drugs’ effects are and to learn how to take them. So why does he do it — and why take the risk?
“There are police drug dogs all over Tube stations now,” he says. “I got paranoid last summer with the Olympics. I don’t want a criminal record — I’ve never been travelling, and it’d just be a huge hassle if I had one.
“The drugs get posted to me and I pay by debit card. The effect of 6-APB is a bit like ecstasy. You feel hot, sweaty, friendly and bit strange by the end of the night. It’s worse if you drink booze with it. Time flies, a whole night can pass in just a few hours.”
There are definite and bizarre downsides, he says. “It keeps you awake longer than MDMA and I sometimes get a weird zapping noise in my head the week after.”
Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, of the Club Drug Clinic (CDC) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, says very little is known about these new alternatives to traditional club drugs.
The CDC was set up in 2012 and has seen 400 patients since it opened. While most drug treatment services cater to heroin and crack addicts, the CDC sees people with problems resulting from the use of recreational drugs, especially ketamine, mephedrone, GBL and methamphetamine.
“We see ‘brain zaps’ among people who use drugs like mephedrone regularly — those who deplete the brain of the feelgood chemicals serotonin and dopamine,” says Dr Bowden-Jones. “The brain is like a sponge: once you squeeze all the water out of it, it takes time to reabsorb it. We don’t know much about these drugs or what the short-term, let alone the long-term, effects will be.”
He says he is reluctant to list the new drugs he is encountering in his clinic because “it becomes a shopping list for some people”.
“We are seeing lots of new chemicals, though it would be fair to say our biggest problems are ketamine and mephedrone,” he says. “Even though mephedrone has been banned it’s still widely available, though purity has gone down and the price has increased.”
Since mephedrone was made illegal in 2010, hundreds of new, legal drugs have appeared for sale on the web. In 2009 there were 24 new drugs found in Europe. In 2010 there were 41. In 2011 there were 51 and in 2012 73 new chemicals appeared. Each time the law bans a drug chemists simply innovate to evade the law and bring out ever-more unknown compounds. This cycle is seemingly endless.
The side-effects for users of many of the new drugs can be severe, says Bowden-Jones, with some users reporting temporary loss of vision, limb paralysis, paranoia and severe psychiatric disturbances.
“They think there are TV cameras in their bedrooms, or cars driving around keeping an eye on them. Intense but transient effects,” he says.
Dr Adam Winstock runs the Global Drug Survey, the world’s most comprehensive analysis of trends and user behaviour, and whose site and app, drugsmeter.com, helps users judge whether they are overdoing it.
“There are simply too many drugs now,” says Winstock. “The ones that worry me most are the synthetic cannabis-type substances. What is the appeal when you can get cannabis so easily — unless you’re in an industry where you don’t want to be detected? In which case you’re on the oil rigs, operating heavy machinery or operating trucks or trains ...”
John Ramsey is a man of unlikely drug habits. Owlish and academic, I can easily imagine him as a Victorian butterfly collector or an obsessive taxonomist. Instead he’s sitting in front of his glass cabinet in St George’s Medical School, Tooting, which is packed with drug paraphernalia. In the next-door room there’s his stash: 27,000 different drug samples. It’s the largest in Britain.
Ramsey is the country’s foremost expert on legal highs and new drugs, and collects samples with the aim of producing a database for the police and hospitals. They can then compare seized drugs to help with diagnosis or treatment. He and his team have even set up toilets outside nightclubs to analyse customers’ urine for drugs.
Ramsey installed toilets in Soho last summer and when they analysed the flushed water they found more than 60 drugs. There were dozens of different compounds, some legal, some illegal, some of them newer legal highs or recently banned drugs. Those urinals offer a perfect, if unsavoury metaphor for the current state of the UK drugs market: a confusing and contaminated mess that makes a value-range horseburger look high-class.
Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That’s Changing How the World Gets High, by Mike Power, is published today by Portobello Books.
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle...egal-highs-8605721.html?origin=internalSearch
Whatever London club owners say in public, in private many will admit that drugs keep their dance floors full and their businesses in profit.
Drugs — especially club drugs — are good for business. Whether it’s cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis or ketamine, that chemical menu stayed pretty fixed for two decades until around 2009, when mephedrone, known as meow-meow, appeared.
It was cheap, it worked and it was convenient. It could be bought online and delivered, like books from Amazon. Most significantly, it was legal and its appearance marked a tipping point — many people started looking for previously unheard-of highs.
Drugs professionals call these new substances “novel psychoactive substances”. Internet drug geeks call them “research chemicals”, since many were designed for use in legitimate scientific research. Those who sell them and those who want them banned call them “legal highs”. I call them something far simpler: Drugs 2.0 — a term that for me reflects the complexity of this new chemical reality, and the role of the web in it.
When I started to research my new book I wanted to pin down the origins of this new drug culture, what these strange new chemicals do, and analyse what this shift in the market means for police, politicians, parents and health professionals. I also wanted to address the question: why take new drugs that no one knows anything about?
In a Farringdon bar I meet 20-year-old student John (not his real name) to talk about his drug use. He says he’s recently been using legal highs and explains that his decision is partly driven by fear of arrest. His latest poison is called 6-APB, a drug that is chemically similar to MDMA — ecstasy — with one key difference: it’s legal.
“I started using legal highs again last year. I used mephedrone when it first came out, but I stopped when it was banned. Some of the new ones are almost as good as a decent pill, better, sometimes. I stopped doing Charlie [cocaine] because it seemed so expensive. The comedowns are bad, though, and I worry about what’s in them,” he says.
The chemicals are made in China, where they are legal, and imported to the UK through specialist websites. John reads online messageboards to see what the new drugs’ effects are and to learn how to take them. So why does he do it — and why take the risk?
“There are police drug dogs all over Tube stations now,” he says. “I got paranoid last summer with the Olympics. I don’t want a criminal record — I’ve never been travelling, and it’d just be a huge hassle if I had one.
“The drugs get posted to me and I pay by debit card. The effect of 6-APB is a bit like ecstasy. You feel hot, sweaty, friendly and bit strange by the end of the night. It’s worse if you drink booze with it. Time flies, a whole night can pass in just a few hours.”
There are definite and bizarre downsides, he says. “It keeps you awake longer than MDMA and I sometimes get a weird zapping noise in my head the week after.”
Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, of the Club Drug Clinic (CDC) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, says very little is known about these new alternatives to traditional club drugs.
The CDC was set up in 2012 and has seen 400 patients since it opened. While most drug treatment services cater to heroin and crack addicts, the CDC sees people with problems resulting from the use of recreational drugs, especially ketamine, mephedrone, GBL and methamphetamine.
“We see ‘brain zaps’ among people who use drugs like mephedrone regularly — those who deplete the brain of the feelgood chemicals serotonin and dopamine,” says Dr Bowden-Jones. “The brain is like a sponge: once you squeeze all the water out of it, it takes time to reabsorb it. We don’t know much about these drugs or what the short-term, let alone the long-term, effects will be.”
He says he is reluctant to list the new drugs he is encountering in his clinic because “it becomes a shopping list for some people”.
“We are seeing lots of new chemicals, though it would be fair to say our biggest problems are ketamine and mephedrone,” he says. “Even though mephedrone has been banned it’s still widely available, though purity has gone down and the price has increased.”
Since mephedrone was made illegal in 2010, hundreds of new, legal drugs have appeared for sale on the web. In 2009 there were 24 new drugs found in Europe. In 2010 there were 41. In 2011 there were 51 and in 2012 73 new chemicals appeared. Each time the law bans a drug chemists simply innovate to evade the law and bring out ever-more unknown compounds. This cycle is seemingly endless.
The side-effects for users of many of the new drugs can be severe, says Bowden-Jones, with some users reporting temporary loss of vision, limb paralysis, paranoia and severe psychiatric disturbances.
“They think there are TV cameras in their bedrooms, or cars driving around keeping an eye on them. Intense but transient effects,” he says.
Dr Adam Winstock runs the Global Drug Survey, the world’s most comprehensive analysis of trends and user behaviour, and whose site and app, drugsmeter.com, helps users judge whether they are overdoing it.
“There are simply too many drugs now,” says Winstock. “The ones that worry me most are the synthetic cannabis-type substances. What is the appeal when you can get cannabis so easily — unless you’re in an industry where you don’t want to be detected? In which case you’re on the oil rigs, operating heavy machinery or operating trucks or trains ...”
John Ramsey is a man of unlikely drug habits. Owlish and academic, I can easily imagine him as a Victorian butterfly collector or an obsessive taxonomist. Instead he’s sitting in front of his glass cabinet in St George’s Medical School, Tooting, which is packed with drug paraphernalia. In the next-door room there’s his stash: 27,000 different drug samples. It’s the largest in Britain.
Ramsey is the country’s foremost expert on legal highs and new drugs, and collects samples with the aim of producing a database for the police and hospitals. They can then compare seized drugs to help with diagnosis or treatment. He and his team have even set up toilets outside nightclubs to analyse customers’ urine for drugs.
Ramsey installed toilets in Soho last summer and when they analysed the flushed water they found more than 60 drugs. There were dozens of different compounds, some legal, some illegal, some of them newer legal highs or recently banned drugs. Those urinals offer a perfect, if unsavoury metaphor for the current state of the UK drugs market: a confusing and contaminated mess that makes a value-range horseburger look high-class.
Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That’s Changing How the World Gets High, by Mike Power, is published today by Portobello Books.
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle...egal-highs-8605721.html?origin=internalSearch
