UK - New law to ban legal high drugs by end of next year

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edgarshade

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Daily Mirror
By Jason Beattie 21/08/2010

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/08/21/new-law-to-ban-legal-high-drugs-by-end-of-next-year-115875-22502688/

'New powers were yesterday promised to tackle the threat of so-called legal highs.
Home Office minister James Brokenshire said he would bring in a temporary ban by the end of next year.
The move follows the death of Michael Bishton, 24, who was found in the sea at Whitecliff Bay, Isle of Wight, after he took Ivory Wave.
The product is advertised as bath salts and sold for about £15 a packet but has become popular as an alternative to illegal drugs. Under the plans police can confiscate suspect substances and the UK Border Agency will seize shipments.

Those supplying a banned substance face up to 14 years' jail and an unlimited fine.
Possession for personal use will not be a crime.
Mr Brokenshire said: "The drugs market is changing and we need to adapt. The temporary ban allows us to act to stop new substances gaining a foothold."'
 
I don't get these legal drugs personally.

I'd rather buy some good 'ol illegal LSD or MDMA before I bother with some legal garbage like 6-AFB or something..

Seems much wiser to break the law with a chemical with a known safety profie before jumping on the bandwagon with these new untested compounds being pushed on the scene.

It's not even like they are cheaper...£15 a packet will buy you some quality illegal drugs..

To each their own I guess.
 
villian said:
I don't get these legal drugs personally.

I'd rather buy some good 'ol illegal LSD or MDMA before I bother with some legal garbage like 6-AFB or something..

Seems much wiser to break the law with a chemical with a known safety profie before jumping on the bandwagon with these new untested compounds being pushed on the scene.

It's not even like they are cheaper...£15 a packet will buy you some quality illegal drugs..

To each their own I guess.
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True, true, but a lot of people don't have any connections to buy illegal drugs.
 
I love the internet-based "legal" drug market. It's stupid to try to stop it. To get as high as often and to feel as good as I do regularly without it would mean diving head first into the illegal drug culture. Simply not funding murderous illegal drug sellers and providing users with the ability to stay outside the illegal drug culture has got to prevent A LOT of violence and tragedy -- not to mention how good not having a social circle like that is for education.

Let's give the power back to outlaw extortionists and killers, with no evidence it'll ever help keep anyone from the awful crime of feeling incredible or thinking creatively! Stupid establishments gettin all uppity, shit.
 
The new drugs are a mixed bag. Some certainly turn out to be nasty and others, like MDAI, could prove to be quite safe pending further tests. The illegal drugs often had a history of medical use before they hit the black market such as LSD and MDMA. So at least something about their harm profile is already known.

What I find curious is that the Chinese manufactures will try dumping drugs that are illegal in a particular country to that country. It might make short-term business sense, albeit unethically, but it makes absolutely no sense beyond that. You guarantee that your customers will either get banned up in jail or lose faith in you for good. What's the sense in that?..........Unless someone somewhere made it worth their while to seed their customers with illegal goods and make the market generally dangerous to put people off.

The other thing I find puzzling is why vendors, having received these newly illegal substances are not busted within a week. It's not the most difficult drugs bust when all the police have to do is order their evidence online and wait for it to drop on to the door mat. Then only reputable vendors who test their products properly would be left........ Or does it suit someone somewhere to allow them to keep the market unpredictable and dangerous to consumers for a while and run a "you don't know what you are getting!" propaganda campaign?
 
lol legal highs meh i still have trouble believing ppl actually pay for those craps. imo thats a good thing. by banning those legal highs they also force ppl to do illegal drugs unintentionally:)
 
Every illegal high was a legal high once. Also "legal high" is a broad term in itself as it could mean anything from Benzo Fury to nutmeg.

One thing that legal highs can be useful for is a providing a quiet way out of the "war on drugs". Existing illegal drugs carry a dead-weight of political and media hysteria baggage. It is easier to regulate substances that are already legal than it is to downgrade substances that are already illegal to legal status.

The legal high market needs to be legitimised so that products can be sold for human consumption and not as incense, alloy polish, bath salts etc. They need a clear list of ingredients showing the amount of any one ingredient, a clearly stated amount of active compound, instructions for dosage and a clear description of the expected effects and side effects. This can be done with herbal products quite quickly.

Legitimising any synthetic products would probably take a very long time to do properly because that's how long it takes to test a new medicine or food additive. But once one or two chemicals get the all clear at least we have an option to depend on while others await approval.

Unfortunately, it looks like "legal high" == "certain death" is the way the political and media are spinning it. Which is a shame, IMHO, because the herbal products will go the same way as the RCs because they also have the name "legal high". I recently learned that the government sees any "high" as something to be stopped, whatever it is.
 
edgarshade said:
One thing that legal highs can be useful for is a providing a quiet way out of the "war on drugs".
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heh. I was thinking the same thing! :)

If personal-use possession won't be crime, then could this be the first step to some sort of decriminalisation - and hopefully regulation? I can't see it with the current administration, but in the future maybe…?
 
These government bans on substances are silly. To attack so called legal highs, they would have to take on caffeine, herbal blends, cigarettes, the pharm industry and so forth before paying any mind to what is being sold by these grey area companies.

Supply/demand- the demand will facilitate the supply and since there are so many compounds being formulated to avoid legalities, banning what is out now will be useless in a year. People are actively inventing new possibilities all the time. the government has no way of knowing what isomer of what molecule will catch on next.

Keep churning out chemists to keep churning out supply for the demand of drugs that can be ordered without dabbiling in the illicit drug distribution networks.
 
eugh the government are idiots...but then again they're tories....
 
shiv said:
eugh the government are idiots...but then again they're tories....
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You do realise that this is idea was suggested by the ACMD on Labour's watch after Alan 'cuntface' Johnson had alienated its members and installed Les 'Yes Man' Iversen to do exactly what he's told to do?

From March 2010 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8582999.stm

Prof Iversen said an interim "temporary" ban while the council considered the evidence would not be effective.
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Labour criminalised Shrooms, Ketamine, GBL and Mephedrone (amongst others) within the last 5 years… they're all as bad as each other! :p
 
shiv said:
k my bad... id still go for labour over tory tho:\
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I'm not voting for anyone unless they legalise drugs. I'm waiting for the next candidate for any election to knock on the door so I can tell them that it's a show stopper. I don't care about any other policy now. I realise that it isn't going to make much of an impact but as a potential voter it is the least I can do. If I'm lucky they'll at least want to talk to me about the issue, because from the noises they make in the media they don't seem to know much about it.

And this is from someone who hasn't taken any illegal drugs for nearly 20 years.
 
its nice to know there are people out there who are positively abstaining instead of just 'not voting' although im passionate about drugs and our human rights I think there are other things to life which is why i vote 'for the best of the lot'.
 
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