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UK Home Secretary Theresa May is continuing a trend of ignoring science advisers when it comes to drug policy:
Home Secretary Theresa May and her statutory advisers on drug policy look to be heading for a showdown over government plans to deal with so-called "legal highs". Some members of The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) are understood to be furious that they were not consulted on proposed legislation for a blanket ban on psychoactive substances. The relationship between the ACMD and ministers in various governments has long been strained. There have been sackings and mass resignations in the last few years, amid claims that expert scientists were being bullied and ignored because their advice didn't coincide with government policy.
Questions are now being asked as to whether the ACMD is being edged out of the drugs debate - 44 years after a Conservative government set it up to ensure science rather than politics dictated policy. In the House of Lords yesterday, a number of peers demanded to know why ministers had not asked the ACMD's opinion before drawing up the controversial Psychoactive Substances Bill.
"It is actually a legal requirement set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 that the ACMD must be consulted before alterations to the Act or new legislation is brought in," Labour peer Lord Rea told the House. "Instead, a specially appointed expert panel was set up by the Home Office. I can only suggest that this was done because the opinion of the ACMD is often not exactly welcomed by the Home Office".
The principle which underpinned the drugs debate in the UK at that time [in 1971] was the longstanding and broadly accepted view that addicts were ill and required treatment rather than punishment. Known as the "British system", ministers felt a medical science-led approach was preferable to US-style prohibition. Roll the clock forward four decades and the government view seems to have turned around entirely in responding to the threat from so-called "legal highs". The bill to outlaw NPS prohibits everything "capable of producing a psychoactive effect" unless it is specifically exempted - and there are concerns that the proposals are being introduced without proper consultation with health experts.
A blanket ban on psychoactive legal highs with prison sentences of up to seven years was featured in the Conservative Party's election manifesto and the Queen's Speech.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:08PM
In related news, I bought a box of pseudoephedrine-based decongestant at the chemists today. The pharmacists behind the counter asked a series of standard questions about any other medications, side effects, had I taken them before. I then handed over some quids. I understand that in the US it's much harder to do this since pseudoephedrine is a common precursor to methamphetamine... a drug that's never really caught on over here as far as I can tell because it's much much easier to just go buy some coke.
I'm in my 30's and, maybe it's just the circles I move in, but everyone I know looks on legal highs as the untrustworthy alternative to known, "tested" drugs, or for those poor souls who want some harmless mind alteration but aren't fortunate enough to know a reputable drug dealer. Some friends who've tried various "legal" weed substitutes as a lark have uniformly derided them as shite (for various reasons). The legal high stimulants are always invariably compared to some cheap speed cut with caffeine or some other similar psychoactive-with-slight-but-nevertheless-unpleasant-side-effects additive for the sake of variety. It's the drug equivalent of "it's like someone dissolved a choc ice in a bottle of bleach. This is childrens booze!". And who in their right mind would stagger down to their local corner shop to buy a mystery drug when all the local dealers offer door-to-door delivery?!
Only reason this is becoming A Thing is because... hey, tory party in for a term now only without the lid dems saying "fuck no!" to the snoopers charter and a PR department still attempting to cater to the vanishingly small UKIP right-wing little hitler demographic. So cue lots of headline-stealing stories about how the tories are doing a great job of Getting Something Done what with all of those meow-meows that children these days are getting free with their breakfast cereal which is the cause of the decay of moral fibre in this country and in my day we'd have just strung 'em up kids these days don't know they're born should've been put into the bally army that'd teach them some respect!
Do I have a coherent point? Not really, because it's not a coherent policy; deaths and illness from cars, smoking, alcohol, fish'n'chips and even the odd bad batch of ecstasy still knock the ill effects from designer drugs into a cocked hat. But a periphery demographic somehow think that legal highs are somehow a terrible problem so we now have poorly planned laws to grab column inches away from stories about our poorly planned drug policies, such as the tories reducing funding to narcotic treatment programmes for people with actual problems in what is fast becoming one of our more schizophrenic national foibles. Some poor sod is found dead in a back alley from a skag overdose and it'll barely make the local paper, some prat of a teenager drinks 30 vodka red bulls and is hospitalised and no-one bats an eyelid but someone ingests some random chemical cocktail at the weekend and all of a sudden it's the end of civilisation.
Article from the daily mash that highlights the legal illegality of legal highs pretty succinctly.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/police-send-out-clear-message-that-legal-highs-are-not-legal-2015060198787 [thedailymash.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:17AM
12.6% of the voting public is hardly "vanishingly small". And for a party the prime minister called "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", I don't think the Conservatives are at all interested in bowing to their interests.
To "little hitlers", if 12.6% of the UK population was readily getting their supply of Zyklon-B out of the garage on the 7th May, I'd be fucking amazed. I think all that weed's done something to you, bro!
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Sunday June 14 2015, @06:27AM
I understand that in the US it's much harder to do this since pseudoephedrine is a common precursor to methamphetamine...
Yes, it's a big enough pain in the ass that one would almost rather buy the more readily available methamphetamine and turn it into pseudoephedrine. [boingboing.net]