NPS - St Johns Wort

[Fingersfan]

Forgive my ignorance and any advice gratefully received, but sine the eventual implementation of the NPS Bill, have any branches of Boots or Holland & Barrett been raided for their stock of St Johns wort?

 

[BecomingJulie]

Probably not, because it is a traditional herbal remedy. I've certainly bought valerian pills since the NPS act became law.

 

[mydrugbuddy]

Probably not, because it is a traditional herbal remedy.

That's a very blurry line; many substances could be argued to fall under that category, most notably the 'milk of the Poppy' as Sean Bean used to say on G.O.T., also Kratom, all types of psychedelic mushrooms, Cannabis.....There's probably many more too that I can't currently think of.

 

[Forever Changes]

half of all things in Holland and Barrett, or growing wild in the countryside could be classed as 'psychoactive' really. This NPS act seems more like a 'everything is illegal unless we say it's legal' approach, rather than the traditional 'everything is legal unless there's a law against it' which I thought was a bedrock of English common law, along with 'innocent until proven guilty'

I'm curious whether there's an actual list of substances that the act banned, and if so, which things are missing from it....

 

[BecomingJulie]

It's more like a list of what isn't banned, but that probably is a matter for the Courts to decide. If there are two people on the jury who have ever used your favourite herbal remedy, you're in luck .....

Poppies probably would already count as opium under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as amended. The law already regards growing psilocybin mushrooms as manufacturing a controlled substance, so don't expect much leniency if you've been brewing poppy tea.

 

[Backfromthebrink]

I'm just surprised that the massive market amongst is gym monkeys for "pre workout" hadn't fallen foul of the act...

Some of the shit that seems legal is acyuallky quite potent..

Mist is just caffine but there are some novel ones as well.

 

[Forever Changes]

It's more like a list of what isn't banned, but that probably is a matter for the Courts to decide. If there are two people on the jury who have ever used your favourite herbal remedy, you're in luck .....

.

but if the Act doesn't specifically state a 'list' of banned substances, then technically it should still be legal to buy and sell kratom, unless they deem it 'psychoactive' at a later date right? It's pretty confusing atm.

Poppies probably would already count as opium under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as amended. The law already regards growing psilocybin mushrooms as manufacturing a controlled substance, so don't expect much leniency if you've been brewing poppy tea

'your honour, the poppy seeds fell into my water bottle and got shaken up when I dropped it'. How could that defence fail? :D

 

[Forever Changes]

this seems to be the key:

A substance will be regarded as psychoactive if it tests positive to one of a series of 5 – 10 in vitro receptor assays (list of
tests not yet in the public domain). A database of around 100 compounds that have already been tested will be updated
as new compounds are discovered, identified and tested. A new compound will be tested and if positive added to the
list and the law applied retrospectively

http://www.drugwise.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Psychoactive-SubstancesAct.pdf

I need to see what that list of 100 compounds is....