UK - Drugs and dotcoms: How the legal highs industry exploded online

[edgarshade]

London loves Business

23 August 2012 | By Sophie Hobson

With reader comments

Public outrage over “research chemicals” is at a peak. We meet the people behind the websites selling them.

The drugs scene used to be so much more straightforward. You had your E’s and whizz, your weed, coke and LSD, and, for the more hardcore aficionados, crack and heroin. Whether you were a dabbler, an addict or an ardent anti-drugs campaigner, at least you knew what was out there.

Today, police, pill-poppers and professors are facing a cornucopia of drug types so diverse it makes Procter & Gamble look like a local sweet shop. New “legal high” chemical compounds, often branded as “research chemicals” to dodge various laws (more on which later), are at the heart of the trend. They’re cheap, incredibly easy to buy, and, of course, legal.

As the Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) notes in its in-depth report from October 2011: “The growth in the NPS [novel psychoactive substances, i.e. legal highs] market has brought a different type of ‘drug dealer’ with entrepreneurs seeing the business opportunity whilst the substance remains ‘legal’. […] Many people importing these new substances appear to have had no previous involvement in the illicit drug trade and are just in it to make a ‘quick buck’.” The ACMD notes that these dealers tend to be “outside of the normal Organised Crime network” but “they are, nevertheless, making substantial profits”.

Quality of product is critical. Tom sends the drugs he sells to labs, then publishes the purity reports on the website. But he only uses two suppliers, both UK-based – “they’re the only ones I trust”. It’s easy to find suppliers, he says - you just look online. “It’s obvious which ones you can trust.”

The Misuse of Drugs Act now covers over 600 substances, but it is 40 years out of date and struggles to keep pace with the sheer amount of new chemical compounds hitting the UK recreational drug scene each year. Legislating against them is a timely and complex process (hence the furore over mephedrone taking “too long” to ban).

So in November 2011, the government brought in Temporary Class Drug Orders (TCDO), which permitted an instant ban on new drugs until they could be further investigated. So far, only methoxetamine (also known as MXE and mexxy) has been made instantly illegal by a TCDO – it was banned on Thursday 5 April 2012.

Simply criminalising the market, though, is not necessarily a sensible plan. To understand why, it’s important to first understand the complexity of assessing health and other risks associated with legal highs.

For customs to intervene at the point of import is simply not doable: “It is impossible to examine or scan all freight and parcels”, as the ACMD’s 2011 report notes. It adds: “There have been police operations against large-scale importers. However, such operations are hugely resource intensive, and have far from certain outcomes. […] The financial cost of submitting forensic samples to identify those that are controlled is very discouraging when considering future operations against NPS suppliers.”

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Sorry. Just realised article names a vendor website in one paragraph and quotes prices. This is against BL rules so the link must go. Anyone adept at search-enginery should be able to find the article easy enough.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

Another reason government want to control the internet. I mean it does make sense from a lawmaker's standpoint.

 

[amanitadine]

Wow, that was a refreshingly good and well informed piece of journalism on a subject that begs for mediocre coverage. Bravo! I'd like to see actual numbers but alas, that's a completely different ballgame. But Thanks, that was a good find. Cheers