VICE: Legalising cannabis is one thing, but legalising stimulants is another thing entirely, right?
Steve Rolles: Different drugs are associated with different risks, and the whole idea of regulation is to manage and reduce risk, so the regulatory tools you'd deploy are going to vary. Within stimulants there's an enormous array of products and risks, so you'd have various models to regulate price, potency, packaging, vendors and marketing, but the principles and goals are the same.
VICE: Where would you be able to buy them?
Steve Rolles: I hesitate to generalise on that, because you wouldn't sell cocaine and injectable amphetamines in the same way. At the most restrictive end of the scale -- for example, methamphetamine and injectable stimulants -- you'd have a prescription drug set-up, a bit like prescribed methadone. For cocaine and MDMA, you'd have something more like a pharmacy. It would be a retail model, but it'd be a strictly regulated one with a trained medical professional as the gatekeeper, who'd have to abide by a set of rules in terms of age controls, not selling to people who are intoxicated, and selling in rationed quantities so you couldn't just buy a kilo of cocaine.
Cocaine and MDMA, and lower potency stimulants such as dexamphetamine, could also be available at licensed premises like pubs or coffee shops, where members buy things to consume on site. Lower potency stimulants would also be bought from licensed retailers, like an off-licence. For things like coca tea and caffeine-based energy drinks such as Red Bull, you don't really need any controls; they could be sold in supermarkets, as some are now.
