UK - Legal highs give a snapshot of drug decriminalisation. And it's not that pretty.

[edgarshade]

Legal highs give a snapshot of drug decriminalisation. And it's not all that pretty

Independent

Memphis Barker
Monday 1 July 2013

With reader comments

I am about to break a rule of thumb. Along with my dreams (spooky), my favourite supermarket (Waitrose) and my going bald (yuck!), I promised myself I wouldn’t resort to regaling strangers with tales of “my university days” and “the drugs we did” in this column. So I’m sorry.

But it seems relevant today. Last week it was announced that the UK has the largest market for legal highs in the EU; nearly 700,000 Britons aged 16-24 have experimented (in their bloodstream) with one form or another. It’s a common line, repeated with varying levels of menace, but the new synthetically produced legal highs – like the just-banned N-Bomb – bear roughly the same relationship to vintage predecessors –herbs like Salvia – as a bungee jump does to a mild bout of trampolining.

It’s true that the hothouse lifestyle of university campuses is hardly the wisest place to conduct experiments with legalisation. Nor is it the most representative. Nonetheless, after the radical unwiring of one or two people I care about, and the widespread normalisation of drug culture, I’d be wary of any attempt to decriminalise our current crop of so-called ‘psychoactive substances’.

The “war on drugs” has failed, and cataclysmically. Perhaps legalisation remains the best solution for society as a whole – but, at least through my anecdotal periscope, it won’t result in nirvana. British people like to boogie, and aren’t too good at stopping.

More...
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...tion-and-its-not-all-that-pretty-8682006.html

 

[Methox23]

Human beings like to consume, whether it be through food or with chemicals. You will never get past that, people like to experiment.

Harm reduction is key

 

[MemphisX3]

Human beings like to consume, whether it be through food or with chemicals. You will never get past that, people like to experiment.

Harm reduction is key

when are the people in charge going to realize that no matter how much money and police power they throw at the people that they are ALWAYS going to ingest chemicals that alter their state of mind? you would think that we have people in office that are intelligent and observant enough to realize this by now.

 

[exists]

^ Yep. People will always take drugs, and if everything becomes prohibited or otherwise unavailable, they'll turn to things like solvents. It's happened before.

What we see going on with the legal highs market does not represent a true snapshot of what decriminalization would be like. Most people would rather take tried-and-true drugs which have a known safety profile.

 

[Transform]

Most people would rather take tried-and-true drugs which have a known safety profile.

/thread

I expect a vast majority of users would leave their NPSs in the dust if they were able to access well known drugs without legal risk.

I do still dislike the idea of having today's unscrupulous shits running the market though.

 

[Psychedelic Jay]

Have they not looked at portugal?

It seems to be doing ok...