poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
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Dr Zee, the godfather of legal highs: 'I test everything on myself'
Dr Zee, the Israeli chemist credited with kicking off the legal highs market in the UK, is showing off his latest invention. Unlike his other discoveries – most notably mephedrone, which caused a media panic in 2009 when tabloids ran scare stories about “miaow miaow” and “plant food” – this one can’t be snorted or swallowed. Instead, it’s a black plastic box that looks rather like a coffee-maker.
“I think maybe we’ll call it the methspresso machine,” he says, while showcasing it on a new BBC documentary, The Last Days of Legal Highs.
The methspresso is more than just a 10/10 pun. It’s Zee’s attempt to get around the British government’s impending Psychoactive Substances bill, which is due to kick in on 26 May. That bill will outlaw not just individual chemical compounds (which cunning chemists including Zee have been circumnavigating with simple tweaks to a substance’s molecular structure), but any substance at all “producing a psychoactive effect in a person who consumes it”.
If anyone knows how to get around drug laws, it’s Zee. Over the past few years, while the UK government struggled to clamp down on the new chemical compounds flooding the market, Zee was creating new ones on a weekly basis – a rate far faster than the government could legislate for.
“My primary motivation is to help people have a good time without breaking the law,” says Zee when we talk. He says he makes a “decent living” from legal highs, but no more than he would have made in his previous job as a scientist and researcher in the pharmaceuticals industry. “My drive comes from the will to create something new, better, legal and safe. The underlying belief of this activity is cognitive liberty. I believe people should be allowed to alter their own state of consciousness and self-medicate, as long as it does not harm others or themselves.”
Zee is a strange interviewee. “How long have we got?” he asks when we first speak on the phone, before embarking on a rather tangential monologue about the media and medical professions. Before I’ve managed to get a proper question in, he tells me he’s got a meeting with his accountant he forgot about and that, actually, we’ll have to reschedule.
Later, he stresses that concocting new drugs is a discovery process not an inventive one: “It’s not nearly as intentional as most people think. The only aspects of a novel molecule I can control are its chemical structure and its legality. But there is no scientific method for predicting what effect it will have on the human body or mind or brain, and whether it will have any effect at all.”
Zee tests every new concoction on himself. “It’s part of my working routine – not part of my private life,” he says. “I make molecule after molecule then try them without prejudice. You have to keep an open mind.”
Cont -
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...er-of-legal-highs-i-test-everything-on-myself
Dr Zee, the Israeli chemist credited with kicking off the legal highs market in the UK, is showing off his latest invention. Unlike his other discoveries – most notably mephedrone, which caused a media panic in 2009 when tabloids ran scare stories about “miaow miaow” and “plant food” – this one can’t be snorted or swallowed. Instead, it’s a black plastic box that looks rather like a coffee-maker.
“I think maybe we’ll call it the methspresso machine,” he says, while showcasing it on a new BBC documentary, The Last Days of Legal Highs.
The methspresso is more than just a 10/10 pun. It’s Zee’s attempt to get around the British government’s impending Psychoactive Substances bill, which is due to kick in on 26 May. That bill will outlaw not just individual chemical compounds (which cunning chemists including Zee have been circumnavigating with simple tweaks to a substance’s molecular structure), but any substance at all “producing a psychoactive effect in a person who consumes it”.
If anyone knows how to get around drug laws, it’s Zee. Over the past few years, while the UK government struggled to clamp down on the new chemical compounds flooding the market, Zee was creating new ones on a weekly basis – a rate far faster than the government could legislate for.
“My primary motivation is to help people have a good time without breaking the law,” says Zee when we talk. He says he makes a “decent living” from legal highs, but no more than he would have made in his previous job as a scientist and researcher in the pharmaceuticals industry. “My drive comes from the will to create something new, better, legal and safe. The underlying belief of this activity is cognitive liberty. I believe people should be allowed to alter their own state of consciousness and self-medicate, as long as it does not harm others or themselves.”
Zee is a strange interviewee. “How long have we got?” he asks when we first speak on the phone, before embarking on a rather tangential monologue about the media and medical professions. Before I’ve managed to get a proper question in, he tells me he’s got a meeting with his accountant he forgot about and that, actually, we’ll have to reschedule.
Later, he stresses that concocting new drugs is a discovery process not an inventive one: “It’s not nearly as intentional as most people think. The only aspects of a novel molecule I can control are its chemical structure and its legality. But there is no scientific method for predicting what effect it will have on the human body or mind or brain, and whether it will have any effect at all.”
Zee tests every new concoction on himself. “It’s part of my working routine – not part of my private life,” he says. “I make molecule after molecule then try them without prejudice. You have to keep an open mind.”
Cont -
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...er-of-legal-highs-i-test-everything-on-myself
