(UK) Mephedrone ban comes into force in UK [Updated April 16th 2010]

7zark7

7zark7

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[size=+1]Mephedrone 'likely to face ban'[/size]
The government's chief drugs adviser has strongly indicated the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will recommend mephedrone be banned.

Professor Les Iversen said he expected the panel would make a recommendation to the home secretary next Monday.

He said he believed mephedrone was "harmful" and hinted that it should be categorised as a Class B drug.

Mr Iversen gave evidence after two deaths were linked to the drug and its links to others were investigated.

The drug is known by various names, including "M-Cat", "MC", "mieow", "meow", "4MMC" or simply plant fertiliser.

Concern over its effects has grown after two friends, Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, died in Scunthorpe last week after taking mephedrone.

'Amphetamine'
Since then a number of other deaths are being investigated to see if they are connected to the drug, including that of a 24-year-old woman who died in North Yorkshire on Monday.

It is usually a white or yellowish powder, which is snorted, but it can also be obtained in pills and capsules. It is marketed as a plant food.

The professor told the Home Affairs Select Committee said it was his personal view as a pharmacologist that mephedrone and other related drugs were "amphetamines by another name".

He also said that if the ACMD does recommend a ban it will recommend "a generic scope that will cover all derivatives of mephedrone - either those made now or those that could be made in the future".

Prof Iversen said it would be a "tragedy" if anyone else died from mephedrone before the ACMD issued its report.

He said a plan by Liverpool John Moores University to use students as guinea pigs in a research experiment on the drug was "pretty unethical".

Psychologists at the university have recruited 50 students for a study into the effects of mephedrone.

Prof Iversen admitted there was a "temporary hiatus" in the ACMD's review of mephedrone following the dismissal of Professor David Nutt last year and the resignations of other ACMD members over government policy on cannabis.

He said there were three vacancies on the ACMD's statutory list of positions which he said would be filled by Monday.

Prof Iversen also revealed that last year he too was "on the verge" of resigning as a member of the ACMD with a "number of colleagues" - because the relationship between the ACMD and Home Secretary Alan Johnson had deteriorated.

However he said was satisfied with the current relationship, and said he was "confident" the body's independence would be fully safeguarded.

Websites selling the drug have told their customers it is a case of "when" not "if" mephedrone will be banned.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/8582999.stm

Published: 2010/03/23 14:24:47 GMT

© BBC MMX
 
Last edited:
Check out my shocked face - :|

Impressive that the ACMD have done lots of tests and investigation in such a such space of time. For them to conclude that mephedrone is 'harmful' is an outstanding piece of scientific work...
 
i can sense my house getting raided as the police know i liked a bit of meph and its a small comunity, bad times...
 
From that story.

He also said that if the ACMD does recommend a ban it will recommend "a generic scope that will cover all derivatives of mephedrone - either those made now or those that could be made in the future."
Click to expand...
 
I'm assuming that would mean banning all beta-ketones - it's hard to see what else could be meant by a 'mephedrone derivative' - which would be bad news indeed :p
 
kayenta said:
I'm assuming that would mean banning all beta-ketones - it's hard to see what else could be meant by a 'mephedrone derivative' - which would be bad news indeed :p
Click to expand...

Yup - that's what I think it means too. :(


Interesting though that Professor Les Iversen once wrote this:

...there are several limitations in the way in which the ACMD operates. The agenda seem to be set most often in an ad hoc manner by reaction to particular events – e.g. the tightening of regulations regarding heroin prescription post-Shipton; the reclassification of cannabis; the review of methamphetamine in response to police requests; the reclassification of “magic mushrooms”, apparently in response to media pressure. I feel that the ACMD should be set a longer-term series of objectives, aimed at a rationalization of our chaotic drug laws, including the development of an evidence-based classification scheme for compounds included in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 – which I believe to be possible.
Click to expand...

Is 'ironic' the right word to use here?
 
Les Iverson is just pandering to this prick:

alan-johnson_175043t.jpg


And it's a crying shame.
 
...and yet another whole section of society will be criminalised!! - when will these wankers realise that if they keep doing this they will have made criminals of the whole of their employer base (us) and there'll be no way they'll stop us revolting....

"come the day of the revolution, bro'"
- Foxy smith

...and just as we shouldn't be surprised they've made another one of our little pleasures illegal, so they shouldn't be surprised we're taking them out, lining them up against the wall and shooting them.....one by one.... :)
 
CartoonPHYSICS said:
i can sense my house getting raided as the police know i liked a bit of meph and its a small comunity, bad times...
Click to expand...

I hope this was some kind of joke and not shear stupidity. If you really felt that your house would be raided, you would be making every attempt to rid the house of all drugs/contraband. And since you're just going to sit back and post on bluelight about you're "bad times" coming up, I'd say you're just dick-sizing and you don't even think that you're going to get raided.

Sorry if I sound like an ass, but that just came off as silly. No one who is really anticipating a raid is sitting around with there thumb in their ass posting about it on the internet.
 
di.ACE.tyl.rob said:
I hope this was some kind of joke and not shear stupidity. If you really felt that your house would be raided, you would be making every attempt to rid the house of all drugs/contraband. And since you're just going to sit back and post on bluelight about you're "bad times" coming up, I'd say you're just dick-sizing and you don't even think that you're going to get raided.

Sorry if I sound like an ass, but that just came off as silly. No one who is really anticipating a raid is sitting around with there thumb in their ass posting about it on the internet.
Click to expand...

I don't think he meant that his house was literally about to be raided, the ban won't be coming in for a while but it makes sense that if the Police have been aware that a person had a quantity of meph for whatever reason they'd probably have their eye on you. I think im just going to ignore any Mephedrone articles in the media from now on as it just makes me rage, I completely dislike mephedrone so it doesn't concern me. What does bother me though is how big a back track this is all causing in terms of more sensible drug laws in regards to other substances.
 
Don't ban meow meow - give it out in nightclubs

[size=+1]Don't ban meow meow - give it out in nightclubs[/size]
Jasmine Gardner
25.03.10

When two teenage boys and a 24-year-old woman die and a new - and, at present, legal - drug called mephedrone is the prime suspect in their deaths, parents inevitably panic.

So the last thing they want to hear is that, in fact, alcohol is probably more dangerous than meow meow, as mephedrone is nicknamed, and is certainly more harmful than a host of other recreational drugs, such as LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabis and ecstasy.

But this is the grim warning from fellow parent Professor David Nutt, the former government drugs adviser.

"For me, as a father with four children, aged 18 to 26, the drug that I know could kill my kids is alcohol. It is the drug that has caused the most damage to my kids' generation and I think we have got to be honest about that," says Nutt, sitting in a modest meeting room at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) - the independent charity, he jokes, "which is responsible for all this".

By "all this" he means his controversial sacking as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) by Alan Johnson last October after the CCJS published his paper entitled Estimating Drug Harms: A Risky Business?

In it Nutt set out the findings from 10 years of scientific research showing clearly that alcohol is the fifth most dangerous drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone (the opiate substitute) and that drugs such as ecstasy and LSD (both currently Class A substances) are less harmful than tobacco.

In addition - and perhaps most controversially - Nutt criticised the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's decision to reclassify cannabis (ranked by him as less harmful than both alcohol and tobacco) from a Class C back to a Class B substance, based on what he calls "the precautionary principle" rather than scientific evidence presented by the ACMD. Smith had also rejected an ACMD recommendation in January 2009 that ecstasy should be downgraded from Class A to Class B, prompting Nutt to write a paper, Equasy, in which he demonstrated that more people died in equestrian events than from taking ecstasy. In the CCJS lecture he stated that the ACMD had "won the intellectual argument" over ecstasy.

"I have watched experts on television be asked the question, 'Which is more dangerous: alcohol or ecstasy?' or 'alcohol or cannabis?' and they always try to avoid the issue," he says. "Eventually somebody has to tell the truth, so I told the truth and this is what happened."

Perhaps not surprisingly, his "truths" garnered plenty of media attention and the day after the paper's publication Nutt got a call from the BBC. "They said: 'We've just heard from the Home Office that you've dropped out of the Monday lunchtime interview [with Radio 1 about ketamine] because they're considering your position.' That was the first I'd heard."

In fact, he had been told by the Home Office chief scientist to withdraw from the interview to "take the heat out of the situation", and it was only by calling his secretary at the Home Office and asking for an explanation that he subsequently received an email from Alan Johnson asking him to resign.

"I replied: 'No. I was just having a discussion about relative [drug] harm. Why should I resign?' At which point a Home Office official contacted me and said, in effect, 'I'll just translate the letter for you, David: You're sacked'."

But Nutt denies he should have seen it coming, pointing out that the Home Office knew in advance what he was going to say. "Nothing in the paper was any different to a lecture I had given three months previously on the subject and nothing I said then was scientifically different from the Lancet paper that I had launched in 2007," he says. "All that had changed was that we [the ACMD] had had the arguments with the Government over cannabis and ecstasy."

Officially, Nutt was accused by the Home Secretary of giving "mixed messages" on drugs. "What I said is that alcohol is more dangerous than the Government is prepared to admit. At present, alcohol and tobacco don't come under the Misuse of Drugs Act because no government has ever said that they should. Nevertheless, I believe the relative harms of alcohol and tobacco should be compared on the same scale as other drugs. Another critical question in relation to mephedrone is how harmful has a drug got to be before it's made illegal?"

The ACMD and the Government first clashed horns in 2005 when magic mushrooms were made Class A without consultation with the council. Nutt did not have time to include magic mushrooms on his chart of relative drug harm but he says he probably wouldn't have classified them and "certainly not as a class A". National statistics show there were 5,737 deaths from fellow Class A drug heroin from 1993 to 2000, compared with only one from magic mushrooms over the same period.

The magic mushroom debate might have been the first but it certainly wasn't the last conflict Nutt encountered as ACMD chair. "Gordon [Brown] came into power and started pontificating about cannabis being lethal. Then came ecstasy," he says. "Drugs have only really become so political under this current administration. Maybe it's because Gordon sees that he's coming to the end and it's a desperate attempt to head off the inevitable."

Which brings us, of course, to mephedrone. A slew of resignations in disgust at Nutt's sacking left the ACMD in-quorate. The Home Office has been making rushed appointments so that new members can advise by the end of next week.

Professor Les Iversen (Nutt's temporary replacement) suggested to the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday that the council would recommend a ban, making mephedrone a Class B drug. He said: "These drugs are amphetamines by another name ... I think you can deduce my conclusions from that." But Nutt is critical of snap decisions.

"The ACMD could say that one confirmed death [of a 46-year-old man last week] is enough evidence to make mephedrone a controlled drug, or they could say they believe in the precautionary principle, but neither of those is scientific and if they do go down that route then they will have lost scientific credibility. It is an open question whether mephedrone is more or less harmful than MDMA [the main component of ecstasy]. We really don't know, but I would say that they are probably similar."

While the Government responds to the mounting media pressure with a plan for "immediate action" on mephedrone, Nutt's views are gaining support from the Facebook generation who see him as a champion for the drugs they may have taken (and argued are relatively safe) for some time. One Nutt support group on the social networking site now has more than 30,500 members.

"If the younger generation sees me as someone who is actually propounding a scientific view of drug use, that's great. But one of the messages we really have to get through to young people is 'don't mix drugs' and one of the phrases we've coined is 'don't drink and drug' because I think a lot of harm comes from people who get drunk and then take things but don't know what or how much they're taking," says Nutt.

"What I wouldn't want is for people to use drugs such as alcohol because they are legal and suffer greater consequences than if they were using [illegal] drugs that may be less harmful. They don't use them because they're worried that the criminalisation will ruin their lives."

One member of Facebook's "Support Professor David Nutt" group, Sergio Montes, speaks for many contributors when he says of the proposed criminalisation of mephedrone: "I guess criminals gangs are right now rubbing their hands thinking about the profits of yet another non-taxable product. Damn it! I guess these criminals are about the only real fans politicians have."

These kinds of arguments prompt Nutt to suggest that "some sort of regulated use for MDMA or mephedrone where people, maybe in clubs, could have access to small amounts, safe amounts under guidance" would be better than the current system of banning drugs and forcing them onto the black market.

Presumably, if that is how Nutt feels, then he wouldn't object to his own children trying mephedrone in controlled doses. "If I found my children were taking mephedrone I would do as I always do and tell them the truth," he says.

He has the same attitude with all drugs. "I would say: 'If you get on to heroin, you are at real risk of dying. Heroin, crack and crystal meth are the drugs you really want to avoid and it would be very distressing for me to know you were taking those'. With alcohol I'd say: 'I know you drink but whatever you drink, try to do it in a way where you don't put yourself at harm'. And with other drugs: 'If you are going to use them, just be aware that the harm of criminalisation may actually be more dangerous than the drugs themselves'."

Does this candidness about drugs extend to his own experiences? "I've never tried it [mephedrone] and I've never tried MDMA. I've hardly used any drugs, I'm a bit weedy really. I'm an old man from a different generation. I hardly even smoked cannabis because I get wheezy, but I'm not against people smoking [cannabis]. And I do drink."

As the Government and Professor Nutt have found, the truth sometimes hurts. But there's far more to lose if people shy away from it.


Link: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifes...-ban-meow-meow---give-it-out-in-nightclubs.do
 
It'll remain legal for at least another 3 months:

NSFW:
EU hurdle prevents meow meow ban

Wednesday, 24th March 2010

Talk of an immediate ban on mephedrone by the Government is highly premature thanks to EU rules which would stall such a move.

"People haven't been informed that our government cannot ban mephedrone without asking the EU for a three-month notification period," said UKIP spokesman Nigel Farage today.


"UKIP will never accept the EU telling us what we can and cannot do. We must be free to act as we choose when we choose.

"We need a proper debate in Britain now about what we need to do. At the moment, the Government is kidding the people but it simply can't act without an EU enforced delay.


"This useless government needs to tell the EU to back-off from controlling or delaying British legislation," said the UKIP MEP for South East England.


Under the EU Technical Standards and Regulations Directive 98/34/EC the government has to give the EU at least three months notification before it can change British legislation.


"Two British teens died from taking legal drug meow meow last week, other young life has already been wiped out," Farage said.


The sale of drug mephedrone has rocketed as head shops have spread over the country.
 
David nutt ftw! The media have been fucking appalling as usual even the "quality media".
 
Fears over mephedrone stockpiling

[size=+1]Fears over mephedrone stockpiling[/size]

Legal drug mephedrone could be banned within weeks, the Northern Ireland Health Committee has been told.

At an urgent session tabled by the Committee a drugs official told members that the issue is being regarded by the government as high priority.

The committee chair, Jim Wells, said he was concerned that the general election could delay a ban.

Mr Wells said the longer it took the greater opportunity people had to buy the drug legally.

"If it's delayed there's quite a lot of evidence of people buying large quantities of this particular potion because they are expecting a ban," he said.

"They're buying it cheaply, stockpiling it and will sell it on the black market when the ban comes in.

"The longer period you give for that the more stockpiling will occur."

Health Department legislative expert Linda Devlin assured Mr Wells a ban could be enacted rapidly even with an election campaign.

"The process would be that a draft order in council would be laid before both houses of parliament so it would have to go through the House of Commons and House of Lords," she explained.

"But even if a general election were to be called today or tomorrow the convention is that there will be a few days, there's a always a few days that urgent business can be taken through.

"So it shouldn't be impossible to have action taken very quickly."

Speaking following the meeting in Stormont Castle on Thursday, First Minister Peter Robinson, and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said the executive were calling for an immediate ban on the drug.

"Anyone who has listened to the heart-rending stories of parents whose children have suffered the tragic consequences attached to the abuse of this so called 'legal high', cannot fail to have been touched by what they heard.

"We will be writing immediately to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to make clear to them, in the strongest possible terms, of our concern in relation to this issue.

"As ministers and indeed as parents and grandparents ourselves, we are committed to doing all in our power to educate and protect our young people from the pernicious evil of drugs in whatever form they take."

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has said he will take immediate action to outlaw the substance if his medical experts recommend the move next Monday.

The responsibility for outlawing and classifying drugs rests with Whitehall and will remain there even when law and order powers are devolved to Northern Ireland next month.

The ACMD will make a recommendation to the Government on Monday, with indications that it will advise that mephedrone is made a Class B drug.

The substance, known by names such as Mcat, meow and bubbles, is available over the counter in "head shops" across the UK.

Public fears about the drug have intensified since the death of two teenage friends in England last week.

Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, died in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, after taking a cocktail of substances including mephedrone, heroin substitute methadone and alcohol.

In Northern Ireland a number of recent suicides have been reportedly linked to depression caused by misuse of mephedrone.

However the legal high has not been definitively established as a cause of death.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/northern_ireland/8588041.stm

Published: 2010/03/25 23:27:52 GMT

© BBC MMX
 
^
How do these people (ie: politicians), who can make such ignorant, ill-informed decisions, get into positions of power where they can effect people's lives?

And total rofflecopter that Martin McGuinness is calling for an immediate ban on it. That murdering bastard probably wants mephedrone banning as it's probably put a dent in the 'funding' some of his 'friends' receive for their 'causes'...
 
Resignation 'threatens drug ban'

[size=+1]Resignation 'threatens drug ban'[/size]
Another senior government drugs adviser has quit, hours before ministers were expected to ban a new "legal high".

The resignation of Dr Polly Taylor from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has sparked speculation that the ban on mephedrone could be delayed.

Lib Dem science spokesman Dr Evan Harris said Home Secretary Alan Johnson's ban would have to wait until the council was "properly constituted".

The Home Office said it would not speculate on any delay to the ban.

There has been media pressure to ban mephedrone, which has been linked in recent press reports to at least four deaths in the UK.

But the law says any move to ban a drug must follow consultation with the Advisory Council.

The council will make its decision whether the drug should be banned on Monday morning, and Mr Johnson was expected to announce a ban later in the day.

However, the council's meeting will be overshadowed by the resignation of Dr Taylor - the ACMD's veterinary medicine expert whose post is required by law to be filled on the committee.

She said she "did not have trust" in the way the government would treat the council's advice.

Dr Harris said: "The 1971 (Misuse of Drugs) Act is very clear that before the government criminalises thousands of people by banning a drug they must take advice on drug harm and other matters from a legally-constituted advisory council.

"If it is necessary to act urgently to ban mephedrone then, by provoking this resignation by their refusal to respect the scientists who offer advice, the home secretary will now be forced to wait a delay while the council is properly constituted."

No letter

A former secretary of the advisory council, Jeremy Sare, told the BBC the council would not be properly constituted until a new vet was appointed, which would take them at least "a few weeks".

A Home Office spokeswoman told the BBC: "We have not received any form of resignation from any member of the advisory council, and we cannot speculate on any issues that could arise on Monday.

"Whatever happens does not change the home secretary's commitment on mephedrone."

In her resignation letter, Dr Taylor told the home secretary she was quitting because she did not have trust in the way the government would treat the ACMD's advice.

"I feel that there is little more we can do to describe the importance of ensuring that advice is not subjected to a desire to please ministers or the mood of the day's press," she wrote.

Mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant, is known by various names, including "M-Cat", and "meow meow".

So far there is no scientific proof that mephedrone has been responsible for any deaths in the UK, and scientists are still trying to work out whether it is harmful on its own or if taken with something else.

However, last week, the government's chief drugs adviser, Professor Les Iversen, strongly indicated that the ACMD would recommend classifying mephedrone as a Class B drug.

Last October, Mr Johnson sacked his chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, saying he had lobbied against government policy.

The sacking led five other members to quit and an urgent review of the committee's working relationship with ministers.

Dr Nutt, who has set up his own rival expert body, has warned that banning mephedrone could be self-defeating and that the evidence supporting a ban wasn't clear.

He has urged the ACMD and ministers to wait for the verdict of an expert European body which is looking at the use of the drug across all EU member states.

"This is a pivotal moment in UK drug policy," said Dr Nutt.

"Given the plethora of 'legal highs' that could follow in mephedrone's wake, the way in which this issue is handled could well set the tone for many years to come."

The Conservatives have called for the law to be changed to allow temporary bans of drugs while the scientific evidence is assessed.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/8592103.stm

Published: 2010/03/29 05:00:59 GMT

© BBC MMX
 
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