UK - The hidden dangers of legal highs

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edgarshade

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Guardian

Mike Power
The Guardian, Friday 26 April 2013 22.00 BST

With reader comments

In the last five years, the market for legal highs has exploded. It's never been easier, or cheaper, to buy drugs online – but no one knows what's in them, or how dangerous they are.

For most of the last decade, an average of four or five new legal drugs came on to the market each year. Trade was steady – government efforts were focused on fighting the spread of illegal substances. And then mephedrone appeared on the scene: cheap, legal and available online. By 2010, the drug, now dubbed meow meow by journalists, had become the fourth most popular drug on the market, after marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy. It was banned in April of that year, but not before a new market had emerged for online legal highs. In 2011, EU researchers found 49 new legal drugs for sale online. In 2012, 73 were identified; hundreds more were banned.

To find out how effective the laws banning these new drugs have been, and how easy it is to buy them, I phone a lab in north-eastern China that supplies websites specialising in legal highs, and ask for bulk prices on synthetic cannabis products. A well-spoken man apologises immediately on hearing my English accent: "Sorry, I totally forgot it. I'll send it tomorrow – UK, yes?" I've never spoken to him before. Business is clearly brisk.
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"Mephedrone was the perfect drug, wasn't it?" Ramsey says. "Water-soluble, not that toxic, and a very effective stimulant. Enormously enjoyable, users say, and very profitable for the dealers. People absolutely loved it. Well, they still do, actually – Britain is awash with the stuff."

Ramsey was among the first scientists to discover the chemical formula of mephedrone and is as conflicted as any rational observer over drug prohibition. "You can't just have shops and websites selling [legal highs] to kids. But it is the anti-drugs legislation, in many ways, that has prompted this innovation."
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Some experts believe a longer-term answer could be to give people controlled, licensed, taxed and regulated access to relatively safer compounds that have been studied for decades. David E Nichols, emeritus professor in pharmacology at Purdue University in Indiana, US, who invented the NBOMe-series of drugs as part of legitimate research into antidepressants, suggests that the government "legalise the safe ones. Mushrooms, mescaline, peyote: all have been used for thousands of years and have been shown to be safe." James Moffatt, a senior lecturer in physiology at St George's, agrees: "LSD is relatively far safer than any of these new compounds, and we have decades of data on it."
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More...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/26/hidden-dangers-of-legal-highs
 
Pretty good article, but it tells the same old story.

a) These unknown chemicals are used because the ones that are relatively safe were made illegal due to the government insanity of a war on drug (user)-s and the incredible power of the pharmaceutical, alcohol, and tobacco industries, not to mention the benefits that illegality brings to law enforcement and the prison-industrial complex.

b) These chemicals may be incredibly dangerous or quite safe; there is really no way to tell without many studies.

c) These drugs may be less dangerous than the media wants it to seem....when I read in the article about 6 deaths since June 2012 that are apparently due to 25I-NBOMe, I wonder how many tens or hundreds of thousands of people have died due to alcohol and tobacco in that time. The media thrives on creating fear, and the government benefits from this, and we have seen many articles recently (say, in the past three years or so) that show a pattern of fear-mongering based on legal highs.
 
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Cornishman said:
The dude who wrote the article posted this a few weeks ago: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/672135-Guardian-story-new-drugs
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Looking at some of his posts he seems like he is mostly coming from the right direction. But I would appreciate an article on the hidden medical and recreational potential of legal highs instead of just the "hidden dangers". Also some true perspective about the MXE-related deaths i.e. falling in a pond when inebriated on anything, be it alcohol or MXE, is likely to increase the risk of drowning. That's not the fault of the drug.
 
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