“Legal highs appear to have arisen because of success in the enforcement on the supply side for cocaine and ecstasy particularly,” Kushlick says. “The demand remains and the entrepreneurs, whether they be criminal or legit, move in to exploit that demand.”
Mike Power, author of Drugs 2.0, argues that the answer to the legal high dilemma does not lie in punitive controls and the annual spending of millions of taxpayers’ dollars. Drugs law should be progressively dismantled, he says, recommending the introduction of a controlled, regulated market of cannabis as seen in Colorado.
“The strength and potency of the drug would be limited by law, with accurate labelling and age requirements for prospective users demanded as we currently have with alcohol,” he says.
Kushlick, too, advocates legalising the more benign substances. “When prohibition goes and we have legally regulated markets for drugs that have been used, in the case of cannabis, for millennia, people will choose to use those,” he says. “Why would you want to use a random white powder?”
