Mephedrone has achieved this unusual status thanks to a number of factors. Firstly, it’s an effective stimulant, which is more than can be said for ecstasy and cocaine these days; the former consisting mainly of disagreeable piperazines (due to their cheapness, and until recently, their legal status) rather than MDMA, and the latter being incredibly inpure. Next up is the lack of a comedown that would normally be experienced with other stimulants, especially for new users. This means people can keep taking it for days on end with little to no perceived negative effects. The other major contributor is the price – at around £10 a gram, it undercuts a great many of its illegal counterparts, while often being more effective, or at least more reliable. Other factors include (potentially inaccurate) purity measures, the ease of buying it from the comfort of your own home  with a credit card, rather than handing over a fistful of crumpled notes to a typical drug dealer, and of course its legal status.  Although the majority of users understand that legal doesn’t mean safe, the fact that you can’t be imprisoned alongside murderers, rapists and other violent criminals for possessing it is certainly a plus. Oh, and it’s psychologically addictive – it won’t kill you if you stop taking it, but you might be able to think of nothing else.

Reports of children doing it, entire friendship groups crumbling as a result of compulsive use and the media frenzy have got people understandably worried and calling for this “evil” drug to be banned.

I Disagree.

Why We Shouldn’t Ban Mephedrone

If you haven’t read Top 10 Reasons Why Legal Highs Should Stay Legal, have a quick look now. Here are a few more mephedrone-specific points:

• Changing the law won’t change demand – we’ve already seen this with the reclassification of cannabis and the massive popularity of the synthetic cannabinoids that just got banned. Also, the decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal has resulted in not only a decline in drug use, but also a decline in drug-related illness and death (HIV from sharing needles, for example), as well as a increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction.
• The current classification system doesn’t work – Our current ABC system is a shambles, as any scientist, or indeed anyone that values evidence, will testify. Currently, one of the safest drugs, MDMA, sits alongside one of the (if not the) most dangerous, heroin. Cannabis, and soon the synthetic cannabinoids, which haven’t killed anyone, are positioned alongside amphetamine, a drug with far more potential dangers and addiction, meanwhile alcohol, which hospitalises over 1200 people a day and costs the NHS several billion pounds a year, remains legal along with tobacco. I would estimate the harms of mephedrone to be similar to amphetamine, if not a little worse, but placing it in class B would give the message that it is as dangerous as cannabis. Placing it in class A wouldn’t be right, as it certainly doesn’t appear to be as dangerous as heroin, but it’s probably worse than MDMA. Placing it in class C would be ridiculous, as it suggests cannabis is more dangerous. It would be impossible to have a sensible think on how to classify it properly without getting a headache.
• If mephedrone’s popularity persists, more people will die – in the event of an overdose or an idiosyncratic response, people taking illegal drugs are far more likely not to either tell the doctors what they’ve taken or even go to hospital in the first place. That’s not to say that mephedrone will kill a tonne of people, but if no one ever died whilst on mephedrone, that would be pretty weird…

What Should We Do Instead?

Just because I don’t think it should be illegal doesn’t mean I think the current situation is perfect. Instead, I think the best thing the government could do to reduce harm is keep it legal, restrict its sale to people over the age of 21 and slap on a tax of something like £15 per gram. This would make it much harder to buy large quantities at a time, especially for kids with little expendable income, and so curb mephedrone’s addictive nature. Obviously, this wouldn’t be the perfect solution, as some teenagers would still be able to get hold of it just like they do with alcohol, but at least less people will be taking it and a lot more money would be available to better fund the NHS, harm reduction methods, education about the drug and scientific research.

Why Mephedrone Won’t Be Classified Immediately

Heh. The government have certainly shot themselves in the foot here. Thanks to the sacking of Dave Nutt and the resignation of three others on the ACMD, the government now lacks the skills to ban it. Dr Les King, one of the resignees, was responsible for a large part of the ban last month, so without people like him, the government can’t do anything for a while. Looks like it’ll be legal for a good year or so yet.

How YOU Can Help

Well, you can’t really do anything about the mephedrone situation, but you can help me out by posting Mephedrone Cat everywhere!

You might save millions of lives by directing them to some of my harm reduction articles.

Post from: Synchronium

Should Mephedrone Be Legal?

You Might Be Interested In:

• Nutt Sacked
• Mephedrone Cat
• Mephedrone: The Facts
• Legal Highs & Terrorism
• Top 10 Reasons Why Legal Highs Should Stay Legal
• Nutt Sacked Episode III – Revenge Of The Schizoids
• Nutt Sacked Episode II – Attack Of The MPs
• Comments From Matt Bowden
• Can I Get High Legally?
• Educators Don’t Want To Listen

#1 – Don’t associate with dodgy people

Selling legal highs can be done by a legitimate business. Since these businesses aren’t breaking the law, engaging in any other kind of illegal behaviour (guns, violence, money laundering, etc) is a massive risk. People that deal illegal drugs are already breaking the law – if they get caught, they’re going to prison for a long time. Breaking the law a second time is no longer such a big deal, especially if the price is right. Not only do you get the safety of dealing with an organisation that doesn’t want to break the law, but you’re also not seen with any dodgy characters, whether that’s meeting up on a street corner, visiting their house or them turning up at your place at a suspicious frequency.

#2 – Comparison Shopping

We all live in hope that one day we could type in RateMyWeedDealer.com, find the best prices in town and arrange for a delivery. Fortunately, as customers of legitimate products, legal highs fans can shop around to their heart’s content. Selling something for more than you should be? Then no one will buy it! It’s as simple as that, so, not only can customers get a better deal by shopping around, this behaviour also encourages healthy competition between legal highs vendors. Another plus for the customer!

#3 – Buyer Protection

Perhaps RateMyWeedDealer.com is a long way off, but what about just ringing your dealer to complain about something? Inadequate packaging? Does the product weigh half as much as you were promised? Unfortunately, I doubt your dealer gives a shit. Luckily, for legal highs consumers, most sites out there have some form of customer service, and if they can’t resolve things, facilities for refunds or chargebacks exist to protect the customer.

#4 – A Strength For Everyone

The sheer number of similar products available mean there is usually a strength for every occasion. Want a bit of an energy boost for work? Caffeine! Want to go to a rave all night? Synthetics! Want to go to a rave but it’s not going to be a “big one” because you’ve got work in the morning, and, let’s face it, your joints and muscles aren’t what they used to be? Something herbal!

I think asking an illegal drug dealer for something cheaper and less effective would be a world first.

#5 – Diversity

Not only is there a range in price and strength, there’s also an incredible range of effects available. Clear headed stimulation, total euphoria, intense rushes, powerful relaxants, shit that makes you laugh – whatever you want, there’s probably something available somewhere that will do the trick. In the world of illegal drugs, that kind of product diversity could only be maintained via a database of epic proportions containing your millions of “hookups” and your own data entry guy.

#6 – Passing A Drug Test

Some people might thing it’s unfair that their co-workers can party all night on a litre of vodka, sleep for a few hours in a bathtub alongside their own sick and eventually drive to work still pissed, while they get fired for smoking a bit of weed after work. Sure, people should get fired if they let their abuse of any substance interfere with their work, but some people may feel that what they get up to in their own time is their own business. These people may feel drug tests are massive breach of their privacy, so it’s a good job that they have a legal alternative to turn to, since they shouldn’t show up on drug tests.

#7 – Friends More Likely To Do The Right Thing

People that overdose on illegal drugs will sometimes go without the treatment they need to avoid any legal trouble for themselves or their friends. Perhaps a friend might not tell the doctor what someone else has taken for fear of getting their mate into trouble. With legal highs, there’s no risk of prosecution so a) people can fully disclose what they’ve taken and could even present the doc with the original packaging and b) the quantity of chemicals in pills or powders will be consistent between batches…

#8 – Batch Consistency

Not only can doctors share notes on specific products, but users can too. It’s no good trying to compare ecstasy pills from different ends of the country, since the contents are likely to vary wildly, even if they share the same stamp. With legal highs, that’s a different story. Consistency between brands and batches facilitates a great deal of discussion not only on how good they are, but also harm reduction. Occasionally manufacturers do change their ingredients, but it only takes a short while for the changes to reach the entire country.

#9 – The Government Could Learn A Thing Or Two

Straight away, the fact that the legal highs industry even exists tells us that people want to get high and that people think the current drug laws are stupid. There’s one massive lesson that could be learned from it though – why not use it as a model for eventually legalising cannabis and the rest? Instead of trying to ban every new substance before anyone has died, why not look at regulating their sales with similar legislation to alcohol and tobacco? If we as a country could get this right with legal highs, we could see if it works or not and them maybe think of abolishing our current bullshit excuse for a drugs law.

#10 – Taxes

Here’s a list of taxes that illegal drug dealers don’t pay:

• Personal Income Tax
• National Insurance
• Corporation Tax
• VAT

If legal highs remained legal and were taxed like alcohol and tobacco, the government would even more money on top of the taxes above that they already receive. These products are relatively harmless compared with alcohol, for example, which hospitalises 1200 people a day and costs the NHS at least £2 billion to deal with, so a tax on them wouldn’t be paying for the damage they’d cause to society – they’d be making the government a massive profit to spend on more doctors, nurses, medical research and fucking moats!

Nice one, G’ Brown!

Post from: Synchronium

Top 10 Reasons Why Legal Highs Should Stay Legal

You Might Be Interested In:

• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Mephedrone: The Facts
• Legal Highs & Terrorism
• Some More Excellent Editing By The BBC
• Mephedrone Cat
• We’re On The News!
• Mellow Yellow!
• Nutt Sacked
• I Got My Tits Out In The Paper
• Cheezing

I just listened to the worst thing I’ve heard so far about the Nutt Sack scandal – BBC Radio 4’s “The Report“, that aired on Thursday. Not only is this as balanced as a lone fat guy on a see-saw, but their arguments compel you to shout at the computer as you listen along. This program was more damaging to my mental health than any kind of “skunk” might be. My favourite bits are when the reporter asks if he can get high by smelling some cannabis and when this woman’s son has a “schizoid episode” because he robbed his mum’s jewellery. Unbe-fucking-lievable! A BBC Radio producer actually got in touch, and encouraged me to pass the link around (excellent marketing there by the BBC, and for once I’m not being sarcastic) so here goes: you can listen to it here.

So, let’s have some fun! I’ll be giving away a 5g bag of Mellow Yellow to the best comment on this post deconstructing this program. You can pick your favourite bits or you can pick apart the entire thing bit by excruciatingly painful bit. Points will be awarded for thoroughness, any references to relevant facts and the cut of one’s jib. I’ll pick the best one by Dec 14th.

Post from: Synchronium

Nutt Sacked Episode III – Revenge Of The Schizoids

You Might Be Interested In:

• Nutt Sacked Episode II – Attack Of The MPs
• Nutt Sacked
• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Democracy In Action
• Music On Drugs
• We’re On The News!
• Mellow Yellow!
• Quick Competition
• This Month’s Winners
• Cheezing

Further to our recent email correspondence about the sacking of Prof. David Nutt, below is a copy of the letter I have sent to Alan Johnson today.  I will send you a copy of the reply I receive.

Next week I am co-sponsoring a cross-party event with Evan Harris (Lib Dem) and Peter Bottomley (Con) at which Prof. Nutt will be speaking to MPs.

Regards, Lynne Jones

And here is that letter:

Dear Alan

Professor David Nutt

As I was unable to be in the House to hear your Statement on Monday regarding the removal of Professor Nutt as Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), I wanted to write to you to express my concerns.

I have seen a copy of your letter sacking Professor Nutt on the BBC website and I have read the Hansard of Monday’s debate.

During the debate on your Statement you infer that Prof. Nutt was removed for not being clear when speaking personally at a lecture to Kings College (London) that he was not speaking for the ACMD and for publishing documents relating to the Government framework without giving the Home Office first sight of them. You also say it was unacceptable for him to criticise Government Ministers and Government policy.

On the issue of speaking personally or on behalf of the ACMD, I note from a report in the 3 November edition of the Financial Times that Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College, who invited Prof. Nutt to give his lecture, stressed that:

“at no point did he make reference to his role as chair of the ACMD, nor did he give the impression that he was speaking on behalf of the ACMD”

Given this, on what basis are you arguing that it wasn’t ‘clear’ that he was speaking personally?  Surely it would be a matter for the members of the ACMD to complain if they felt this was the case (when in fact members of that Committee have resigned in protest at your action against Prof. Nutt).

On the question of publishing documents, unless you want to stop advisers expressing their views publicly, what are the reasons for the Government insisting on first sight of material published on the subject areas advisers give advice on?  Can you clarify what the documents were that Prof. Nutt published without first showing them to the Home Office and what action your Department would have taken had you had first sight of the documents?  Specifically would the Home Office have taken any action to change the content of the documents in question?

In the House on 2 November you said that whilst Prof. Nutt had the right to ‘express his views’ he did not have the right to criticise the Government and its drugs policy framework.  Isn’t this putting restrictions on his right to express himself independently in his role as an academic with expertise in this area?  It seems to me that this is different from campaigning against Government policy as you have accused him of doing.  If the Government wants independent evidence-based scientific advice doesn’t it have to face the consequences if it ignores the advice given?  Why didn’t you just defend your policy if you have confidence in it?

I should also be grateful for your response to the widespread criticism that your decision has received from the scientific community and the concern that you have jeopardised the relationship between independent scientific advisers and Government.  In particular, I noted the letter in the 2 November edition of the Times from Ian Stolerman, Emeritus Professor of Behavioural Pharmacology from the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London:

“All scientists who work without pay to advise the Government must surely be considering their positions.”

And no doubt you will have heard Professor Colin Blakemore, former head of the Medical Research Council, on the Today programme and his comment that:

“This is not just an issue about drugs: the Government depends very widely on advice from experts who give their time freely.”

Critics of your decision are backed up by the recent Government response to the Innovation, Science and Skills Committee’s Eighth Report of Session 2008–09, published only a matter of days before the sacking of Prof Nutt, which states:

“The Government agrees that the independence of science advisers is critical. It was precisely for this reason that the GCSA wrote to then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to express concern over her criticism, in Parliament, of Professor Nutt (Chairman of ACMD) with regard to an article he published in a peer-reviewed journal“

I note that despite this official Government declaration of concern over criticism by your predecessor of the ACMD Chair, on Monday, you referred to Jacqui’s criticism of Prof. Nutt as if this somehow justified your own action against him.  Do you accept that your dismissal of Prof. Nutt contradicts the Government’s position as outlined in this recent Response to the ISS Committee Report?

Turning to the issue of the classification of cannabis itself, in 2007, before the announcement in 2008 that cannabis was to be reclassified back to class B, I tabled an Early Day Motion about the dangers of cannabis use that I would like to bring to your attention (text printed on the back of this letter).  From this you will see that, whilst I accept that there are hazards associated with cannabis use, as does Prof. Nutt, this would not of itself justify the reclassification to class B, as classification is about relative hazard – the very point of Prof. Nutt’s comments.

Furthermore, in the EDM, I also pointed out that the downgrading of cannabis to class C from class B in 2004 was actually associated with reduced cannabis use by young people, as evidenced by the following table produced by your own Department with information from British Crime Survey respondents:

As you of course know, cannabis was reclassified from B to C with effect from January 2004 and reclassified back to B in December 2008 with effect from January 2009.  As you will note from the above statistics for this period, the proportion of 16-24 year-old respondents declaring cannabis use in the previous year fell from 25.3% in 2003/04 to 18% in 2007/08.  I was therefore very disappointed by your response to the question put to you during the debate on your 2 November Statement by George Howarth:

Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North and Sefton, East) (Lab): If my right hon. Friend had taken Professor Nutt’s advice and lowered the categorisation of cannabis, and if as a result more young people had started to use it, would not that have been irresponsible?

Alan Johnson: Yes, I think it would have been. That is why my predecessor decided not to take that advice and why that decision has been endorsed by this Parliament.

I would be interested to know why you did not base your answer on the statistical evidence on cannabis usage rates amongst young people during the period when categorisation was lowered.  Were you unaware of the above data or were you aware but misleading the House in your reply by your suggestion that it was because more young people started using cannabis when it was classified downwards to class C that Jacqui reclassified the drug upwards?

Either way, your failure to refer to your own published data on this particular question serves to reinforce the point that Government is ignoring evidence on issues relating to drug classification.

LYNNE JONES MP

Brilliant! When I first got in touch, I had no idea she’d even respond, let alone write a letter to Alan Johnson! She’ll copy me in on his reply too, should he ever write back. Somehow I don’t think he will…

If you haven’t written to your MP yet, please do so. Details on how to get in touch with them can be found here.

Post from: Synchronium

Nutt Sacked Episode II – Attack Of The MPs

You Might Be Interested In:

• Nutt Sacked
• Nutt Sacked Episode III – Revenge Of The Schizoids
• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Democracy In Action
• Music On Drugs
• How To Make Hash – The Ultimate Guide!
• Cannabis Reclassification
• Cannabis Cookies
• The Ultimate Hash Brownie Recipe
• How To Make Cannabis Butter

Malcolm Tucker: The angriest man on telly

Firstly, as everyone will know Prof. David Nutt was sacked as head of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Ever since this news broke, I’ve not been able to shake the image of Prof. Nutt getting a bollocking from Malcolm out of The Thick Of It. On its own, this isn’t big news; people get sacked all the time. But the reason why he got sacked is gobsmacking.

The Situation

It all started in 2008 when the government decided cannabis was far more deadly than ever before, what with all these new “skunk” strains appearing, and reclassified it back up to Class B. Of course, because the cannabis was “much stronger” than in previous years (for more on why that’s total horse shit, read Bad Science), everyone who smokes it will get schizophrenia, or so Gordon “Golden” Brown would have us beleive. Actually, he just pulled that straight out of his arse. Prof. Nutt, et al., wise to this bullshittery, recommended against the reclassification and was ignored. More recently, Dave (I’m sure I can call him Dave) published a paper comparing the dangers of ecstasy with the dangers of horse riding, finding that horse riding was actually more dangerous – “Equasy – An overlooked addiction with implications for the current debate on drug harms” [pdf; 65 kb]. This wasn’t a piece of propaganda published by some idgit with an agenda; it was a paper in a peer-reveiwed journal, alongside other factually accurate and interesting publications – all Dave did was let the evidence speak for itself. Dave’s final piss-take of current policy came when he delivered a lecture on entitled “Estimating drug harms: a risky business?” [pdf; 366 kb], basically saying the same thing that this episode of Horizon says – heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone are the only drugs more harmful than alcohol, while LSD, ecstasy and cannabis are all less harmful that both alcohol and tobacco. As a result, Alan Johnson, our beloved home secretary and ex-postman, has lost confidence in the advice given by Dave, with over 40 years of relevant scientific background in the subject. Here are my top quotes (and interpretations) from Alan “I’m a fucking moron” Johnson:

This was not about Prof Nutt’s views, which I respect though I don’t agree with them.

This means “I don’t understand the importance of evidence” or “I disagree with the evidence because it doesn’t support my conclusion”

You cannot have a chief adviser… campaigning against government

This means “We’re not willing to accept advice that goes against the political message we’re trying to send”

There are not many kids in my constituency in danger of falling off a horse – there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction.

This means “What goes on in my constituency is applicable to the entire country.”

More Dangerous Than Ecstasy

This last (and most recent quote) is my favourite. Not only does it show an unbelievable arrogance, it also shows a deep misunderstanding of either the research or his constituency. Horse riding kills more people than ecstasy – that’s a fact. Is he arguing that thousands of people are at risk from a hitherto-unheard-of ecstasy addiction? Bollocks!  Or is he perhaps saying that all drugs are a problem? In that case, the comparison to horse riding isn’t fair, since that only applies to ecstasy, not all drugs. Who’d have thought that one single sentence could make someone look so stupid? Oh, and one final point – what about cheap, legal alcohol? I wonder how many people in his constituency have been sucked into hopeless despair though alcohol addiction?

Why Dave Is In The Right

Firstly, the Code o’ Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees states:

Rules of conduct need not affect a member’s freedom to represent his or her field of expertise in a personal capacity. The committee’s rules however should generally oblige members to make clear when they are not speaking in their capacity as committee members.

Guess what – the lecture was given as the Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London, not as chairman of the ACMD. This was made perfectly clear. BAM! Next, the Misuse of Drugs act includes the following within the ACMD’s remit:

educating the public (and in particular the young) in the dangers of misusing such drugs and for giving publicity to those dangers

BOOM! If that includes setting the current drugs policy straight in order to better communicate the relative harms of illegal drugs, then well done Dave for doing the job you were hired to do!

The Resignations

So far, other than Dave, Dr Les King and Marrion Walker have resigned. Les is part-time advisor to the Department of Health, and was a senior chemist on the ACMD, who’s responsible for drafting the legislation I’ll talk about shortly. Marrion is the clinical director of Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s substance misuse service and was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s representative on the ACMD. As you can imagine, the resignation of these key figures has been a massive blow to the ACMD’s future credibility.

With any luck, the rest of them will resign next Monday, and no other respectable scientist will take their place.

What YOU Can Do About It

Facebook has been the primary theatre of action in this conflict between reason and the idiot brigade in power. If you use Facebook, you might like to join the “Support and Reinstate Professor David Nutt: We want an evidence based drugs policy.” group, which has been set up by the Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK. There are tonnes of comments, discussion, links ‘n’ all that, and it’s currently just over 8600 members strong. Alan Johnson’s Facebook page was public until very recently. Last time I went on there, it was covered in comments informing him of his own stupidity.

There are also a couple of worthwhile petitions UK residents can sign:

• Reinstate Prof. David Nutt
• Evidence-based Drugs Policy

And finally, I’d suggest writing to your local MP. Obviously, an actual letter would carry more weight than an email, but if you’ve got 10 mins to spare, you can use the website WriteToThem to find your local MP and fire off an email. I sent one off yesterday and got an encouraging reply this morning. I copied one someone else wrote from that Facebook group above and edited a few bits here ‘n’ there, and if you do the same, please edit my letter before you send it – that website won’t send identical messages. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Lynne Jones,

I am writing to express my disappointment at the recent sacking of Professor David Nutt, Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by the current Home Secretary, Alan Johnson.

It is the role and duty of a scientist to objectively determine truth and fact about the way in which the world works, and to present the evidence demonstrating those facts. Whether such facts are convenient, inconvenient, comfortable or uncomfortable or happen to contradict government policy is irrelevant. A scientist influenced by political expediency is not a scientist.

I fully understand that advisers advise and that ministers are responsible for decisions on policy, but the terms of reference of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, as laid down in the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971 include the following:

“educating the public (and in particular the young) in the dangers of misusing such drugs and for giving publicity to those dangers; ”

Professor Nutt has made public remarks about the relative risks of the use of substances currently illegal in the UK, comparing them to other legal substances and other common leisure pursuits. This fulfils the remit, quoted above, of ‘educating the public’, especially since the current drugs classification system does nothing to highlight the relative harms of illegal drugs.

In this case, the facts, as determined by the scientific method, may well cause many members of the public to question current Government policy. This is only right and proper in a democracy.

By asking Professor Nutt to stand down, the Home Secretary has sent a message that he finds it acceptable to disrupt the education of the public and that he is willing to suppress those who have a clear remit to present the public with facts in order to do this.

It is also worth noting that the document: “Putting Science and Engineering at the Heart of Government Policy: Government Response to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee’s Eighth Report of Session 2008-09 – Science and Technology Committee ” states the following in Appendix One:

“SAC members should not be criticised for publishing scientific papers or making statements as professionals, independent of their role as Government advisers. (Paragraph 64)

“The Government agrees that the independence of science advisers is critical. It was precisely for this reason that the GCSA wrote to then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to express concern over her criticism, in Parliament, of Professor Nutt (Chairman of ACMD) with regard to an article he published in a peer-reviewed journal. ”

To my mind, the actions of the Home Secretary are undemocratic, dishonest, an attempted suppression of freedom of speech and a middle finger to anyone who understands and appreciates the scientific method.

Should not the Home Secretary now be considering his position?

I would be grateful for your thoughts.

Yours sincerely,
John Clarke

Here’s her reply:

I agree with you. When the issue if reclassifying cannabis back to class B in 2007, I tabled the following parliamentary motion:

EDM 209

RESPONDING TO THE DANGERS OF CANNABIS USE

That this House supports the mental health charity Rethink in its call for a public education campaign to convey the dangers of cannabis use; offers this support in light of the recent review of research published in the Lancet, which concludes that frequency of cannabis use increases the risk of psychotic illness such as schizophrenia by up to 40 per cent.; calls for clarity on the cannabis debate, particularly regarding the strength of skunk varieties of the drug; believes that reclassifying cannabis will not in itself lead to a decrease in the number of people who use it; notes that the proportion of young people using cannabis has actually fallen since it was reclassified in January 2004 from 25.3 per cent. of 16 to 24 year olds in 2003-04 to 20.9 per cent. in 2006-07; and urges the Government to commit to the development of a long-term awareness and information campaign with health promotion rather than a change in the law as the main lever to reduce use, in addition to funding research into the link between cannabis use and mental ill health.

If search under cannabis on my website, link below, you will find further information on my views and a report of a meeting of the All-Party Group on Mental Health on cannabis and schizophrenia.

I will pass on your comments to the Home Secretary to get his response.

Personally, as a former scientist myself, I despair at the selective use of science by colleagues from all parties and this latest example will no doubt give me further opportunities to raise my concerns. [My emphasis]

Regards

LYNNE JONES MP

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

http://www.lynnejones.org.uk

That’s certainly much better than I’d have hoped!

Legal Highs ban

Next up is the BZP/GBL/Spice ban – here’s the proposal [pdf; 46 kb]. It looks like it goes into effect on December 23rd. I can’t give much more detail yet, since I’m not really a chemist, but it looks like all the decent smoking mixes will be gone by then. Better stock up before Christmas.

Post from: Synchronium

Nutt Sacked

You Might Be Interested In:

• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Nutt Sacked Episode II – Attack Of The MPs
• Nutt Sacked Episode III – Revenge Of The Schizoids
• Comments From Matt Bowden
• Legal Highs & Terrorism
• Shock Horror! Clubs Protect Own Interests!
• Democracy In Action
• Can I Get High Legally?
• Educators Don’t Want To Listen
• Cannabis Reclassification

Nothing makes you want to drink more than already being pissed. “Yeah, sure *burp*, I’ll have one more. Actually *hic*, better make it four…” (Of course, by “you”, I actually mean the majority of the drinking population who don’t drink responsibly. If you eat beforehand, alternate between alcohol & soft drinks and stick to a predefined limit each night, then well done you, but read on anyway.) Unfortunately, legal highs don’t have that effect. Users tend to have a much better time without drinking. Either that, or the drink does nothing but give you a hangover, in the case of many legal stimulants.  This would seem to be the real reason behind this latest move against legal highs. Which, I suppose, is fine in principal (you wouldn’t expect to bring your £6 bottle of Tesco Value vodka into a club, would you?), but at least have the balls to admit it. Not coming clean makes them look far worse, because as we all know, alcohol is far more likely to kill you than most other drugs. Actually, I bet more people have died from seizures in clubs because of the loud music and lights than have died from legal highs.

Another reason in the same vein is that some clubs want to protect their illegal drugs trade too. It sounds a bit conspiracy theorist, I know, but some clubs definitely do have their own supply of illegal drugs. You’d think a bunch of geezers covered with bling that hang out by the fucking bar would get kicked out at the first sign of dealing, but every time I’ve been to this particular club, the same guys have been there, looking as shifty as they are reflective. In another club we go to quite a bit, I’ve actually seen first hand a drug dealer go up and ask a bouncer if he’s got any more pills, who then went to ask the guy behind the bar.

And now for a final twist in the story… These days, “pills” rarely contain any illegal drugs at all! That’s right. Thanks to the increasing popularity and availability of piperazines (such as the infamous BZP), acquiring a pill that contains any actual MDMA is nearly impossible. A popular favourite among dealers at the moment is a compound called mCPP (m-ChloroPhenylPiperazine), whose side effects include massive headaches and nausea. It’s about 5 times cheaper for a chemist to make mCPP than MDMA, as none of the precursors are restricted, so now about 50% of all the pills across Europe contain it. It seems this chemical alone is responsible for the tidal wave of sick that now flows from the toilets of decent clubs across the country.

Like I said, this move is acceptable in principle, but I wish they wouldn’t act like they’re doing everyone a favour. Next, they’ll take away our legal right to tap water in order to prevent that dreaded hyper-hydration.

Fortunately though, there’s always evangelical Christianity to turn to, as seen in this week’s episode of Christian Drum ‘n’ Bass:

Post from: Synchronium

Shock Horror! Clubs Protect Own Interests!

You Might Be Interested In:

• Nutt Sacked
• Harry Pothead & Other Stuff
• Comments From Matt Bowden
• Legal Highs & Terrorism
• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Can I Get High Legally?
• Educators Don’t Want To Listen
• Competition Winner, New Products & The Best Thing On The Internet
• Cannabis Reclassification
• Egyptian Ecstasy – Blue Lotus

Let us pause for a moment to consider the numerous medical applications of tobacco & alcohol… Oh, wait! What’s that, ACMD? There are none?! Didn’t think so. Apart from the blatant double standards, let’s talk about why they’re wrong.

Medical Marajuana: By the looks of these doobs, this patient probably has Parkinson's

Cannabinoids bind to cannabinoid receptors in your brain and immune system. These includes the synthetics, such as JWH-018, THC in cannabis and of course our body’s own cannabinoid compounds (called endocannabinoids, which include Anandamide and many others). The fact that our body not only has these receptors, but also produces compounds to act on them means they’re important, otherwise they wouldn’t have evolved. Unfortunately, research into the cannabinoid system is difficult, because cannabis is illegal, so synthetic cannabinoids which aren’t flat-out illegal are a useful tool in the lab, both to help us learn more about the cannabinoid system and related processes such as feeding & anxiety, and in the quest to develop new drugs. Also, if very little research has been conducted using these compounds about to be banned, it’s no wonder that no specific medical uses have been discovered! These things take time.

One more interesting point… Cannabis itself has medical uses, so how can these similar compounds have none? In fact, just today, the BBC reported that Cannabis may prevent Osteoporosis. I’m not going to list all the medical reasons for legalising cannabis, because I’d be writing all day. If it had no uses what so ever, why do medical dispensaries exist in the US? Banning these compounds is a massive step backwards for medical science.

Needless to say, this has been picked up by a shitload of big news outlets, including The Guardian, The Metro, Sky News, BBC Radio 1 and The Times (who listed Coffeesh0p as a source! It’s a poor article, but christ, that cheered me up!)  A lot of those sites allow users to comment under the article, so let’s take a look at a few:

Simple solution to stop people using Spice –
Legalise cannabis.
Sorted.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Banning a drug because of its “potential harm” with little research is laughable, especially seeing as it is reported to have similiar effectto cannabis of all things.

Is anyone able to explain whats implicitly wrong with psychoactive drugs in the first place?

I fail to see why spice should be banned without any evidence that it is dangerous. It seems to me our government just doesn’t like people getting high, probably incase they start thinking.

The powers that be like to control us, in other words – if it makes you feel good, or gives you some happiness, then ban it.

The stresses of paying tax are bad for me. Are they going to ban that too?

Everything we eat or do kill us slowly. Air kills us, although slowly. Time kills us. How much are they going to ban? Let people do what they want with their bodies, that is the meaning of life. If I want to smoke cannaboloids [sic] with chemicals on it, slap a warning on there and let me decide.

If they are going to ban this stuff for health reasons then they HAVE to ban alcohol and tobacco too, as they are just as, if not more, dangerous – except, of course, they provide the Govt with Tax..

Well we can’t have people getting high on anything but alcohol now can we?
After all it’s America’s recreational drug of choice and the UK’s too.

Now, these aren’t from threads found on pro-drugs forums, or comments under a pro-drugs blog, these are comments under actual articles on massive news sites. Not just one site, but all of those sites I mentioned that allow comments. I’m not saying that the internet-savvy people that’re likely to leave comments are representative of the population as a whole, but surely it says something about what the people want? I don’t think I’ll bother voting next time.  Seriously.

In short, it looks like our Smoking Mixtures section won’t be around for too much longer. Get them while you can!

Post from: Synchronium

Democracy In Action

You Might Be Interested In:

• Nutt Sacked Episode III – Revenge Of The Schizoids
• Nutt Sacked Episode II – Attack Of The MPs
• Nutt Sacked
• I Got My Tits Out In The Paper
• How To Make Hash – The Ultimate Guide!
• JWH-018, Spice & Me
• Music On Drugs
• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Mellow Yellow!
• Quick Competition

The following passage is taken from Sam Harris’s book, The End Of Faith, and talks about religion’s role in keeping drugs illegal:

The War on Sin

In the United States, and in much of the rest of the world, it is currently illegal to seek certain experiences of pleasure. Seek pleasure by a forbidden means, even in the privacy of your own home, and men with guns may kick in the door and carry you away to prison for it. One of the most surprising things about this situation is how unsurprising most of us find it. As in most dreams, the very faculty of reason that would otherwise notice the strangeness of these events seems to have succumbed to sleep.

Behaviors like drug use, prostitution, sodomy, and the viewing of obscene materials have been categorized as “victimless crimes.” Of course, society is the tangible victim of almost everything human beings do—from making noise to manufacturing chemical waste— but we have not made it a crime to do such things within certain limits. Setting these limits is invariably a matter of assessing risk. One could argue that it is, at the very least, conceivable that certain activities engaged in private, like the viewing of sexually violent pornography, might incline some people to commit genuine crimes against others. There is a tension, therefore, between private freedom and public risk. If there were a drug, or a book, or a film, or a sexual position that led 90 percent of its users to rush into the street and begin killing people at random, concerns over private pleasure would surely yield to those of public safety. We can also stipulate that no one is eager to see generations of children raised on a steady diet of methamphetamine and Marquis de Sade. Society as a whole has an interest in how its children develop, and the private behavior of parents, along with the contents of our media, clearly play a role in this. But we must ask ourselves, why would anyone want to punish people for engaging in behavior that brings no significant risk of harm to anyone? Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it. It is in such cases that the true genius lurking behind many of our laws stands revealed. The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin.

It is no accident that people of faith often want to curtail the private freedoms of others. This impulse has less to do with the history of religion and more to do with its logic, because the very idea of privacy is incompatible with the existence of God. If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.

A variety of religious notions of wrongdoing can be seen converging here—concerns over nonprocreative sexuality and idolatry especially—and these seem to have given many of us the sense that it is ethical to punish people, often severely, for engaging in private behavior that harms no one. Like most costly examples of irrationality, in which human happiness has been blindly subverted for generations, the role of religion here is both explicit and foundational. To see that our laws against “vice” have actually nothing to do with keeping people from coming to physical or psychological harm, and everything to do with not angering God, we need only consider that oral or anal sex between consenting adults remains a criminal offence in thirteen states. Four of the states (Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) prohibit these acts between same-sex couples and, therefore, effectively prohibit homosexuality. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone (these places of equity are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia). One does not have to be a demographer to grasp that the impulse to prosecute consenting adults for nonprocreative sexual behavior will correlate rather strongly with religious faith.

Jesus once got 5000 people totally baked with only an eighth of weed

The influence of faith on our criminal laws comes at a remarkable price. Consider the case of drugs. As it happens, there are many substances—many of them naturally occurring—the consumption of which leads to transient states of inordinate pleasure. Occasionally, it is true, they lead to transient states of misery as well, but there is no doubt that pleasure is the norm, otherwise human beings would not have felt the continual desire to take such substances for millennia. Of course, pleasure is precisely the problem with these substances, since pleasure and piety have always had an uneasy relationship.

When one looks at our drug laws—indeed, at our vice laws altogether—the only organizing principle that appears to make sense of them is that anything which might radically eclipse prayer or procreative sexuality as a source of pleasure has been outlawed. In particular, any drug (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, marijuana, etc.) to which spiritual or religious significance has been ascribed by its users has been prohibited. Concerns about the health of our citizens, or about their productivity, are red herrings in this debate, as the legality of alcohol and cigarettes attests.

The fact that people are being prosecuted and imprisoned for using marijuana, while alcohol remains a staple commodity, is surely the reductio ad absurdum of any notion that our drug laws are designed to keep people from harming themselves or others. Alcohol is by any measure the more dangerous substance. It has no approved medical use, and its lethal dose is rather easily achieved. Its role in causing automobile accidents is beyond dispute. The manner in which alcohol relieves people of their inhibitions contributes to human violence, personal injury, unplanned pregnancy, and the spread of sexual disease. Alcohol is also well known to be addictive. When consumed in large quantities over many years, it can lead to devastating neurological impairments, to cirrhosis of the liver, and to death. In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people annually die from its use. It is also more toxic to a developing fetus than any other drug of abuse. (Indeed, “crack babies” appear to have been really suffering from fetal-alcohol syndrome.) None of these charges can be leveled at marijuana. As a drug, marijuana is nearly unique in having several medical applications and no known lethal dosage. While adverse reactions to drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen account for an estimated 7,600 deaths (and 76,000 hospitalizations) each year in the United States alone, marijuana kills no one. Its role as a “gateway drug” now seems less plausible than ever (and it was never plausible). In fact, nearly everything human beings do—driving cars, flying planes, hitting golf balls—is more dangerous than smoking marijuana in the privacy of one’s own home. Anyone who would seriously attempt to argue that marijuana is worthy of prohibition because of the risk it poses to human beings will find that the powers of the human brain are simply insufficient for the job.

And yet, we are so far from the shady groves of reason now that people are still receiving life sentences without the possibility of parole for growing, selling, possessing, or buying what is, in fact, a naturally occurring plant. Cancer patients and paraplegics have been sentenced to decades in prison for marijuana possession. Owners of garden-supply stores have received similar sentences because some of their customers were caught growing marijuana. What explains this astonishing wastage of human life and material resources? The only explanation is that our discourse on this subject has never been obliged to function within the bounds of rationality. Under our current laws, it is safe to say, if a drug were invented that posed no risk of physical harm or addiction to its users but produced a brief feeling of spiritual bliss and epiphany in 100 percent of those who tried it, this drug would be illegal, and people would be punished mercilessly for its use. Only anxiety about the biblical crime of idolatry would appear to make sense of this retributive impulse. Because we are a people of faith, taught to concern ourselves with the sinfulness of our neighbors, we have grown tolerant of irrational uses of state power.

Our prohibition of certain substances has led thousands of otherwise productive and law-abiding men and women to be locked away for decades at a stretch, sometimes for life. Their children have become wards of the state. As if such cascading horror were not disturbing enough, violent criminals—murders, rapists, and child molesters—are regularly paroled to make room for them. Here we appear to have overstepped the banality of evil and plunged to the absurdity at its depths.

The consequences of our irrationality on this front are so egregious that they bear closer examination. Each year, over 1.5 million men and women are arrested in the United States because of our drug laws. At this moment, somewhere on the order of 400,000 men and women languish in U.S. prisons for nonviolent drug offences. One million others are currently on probation. More people are imprisoned for nonviolent drug offences in the United States than are incarcerated, for any reason, in all of Western Europe (which has a larger population). The cost of these efforts, at the federal level alone, is nearly $20 billion dollars annually. The total cost of our drug laws—when one factors in the expense to state and local governments and the tax revenue lost by our failure to regulate the sale of drugs—could easily be in excess of $100 billion dollars each year. Our war on drugs consumes an estimated 50 percent of the trial time of our courts and the full-time energies of over 400,000 police officers. These are resources that might otherwise be used to fight violent crime and terrorism.

In historical terms, there was every reason to expect that such a policy of prohibition would fail. It is well known, for instance, that the experiment with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States did little more than precipitate a terrible comedy of increased drinking, organized crime, and police corruption. What is not generally remembered is that Prohibition was an explicitly religious exercise, being the joint product of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the pious lobbying of certain Protestant missionary societies. The problem with the prohibition of any desirable commodity is money. The United Nations values the drug trade at $400 billion a year. This exceeds the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense. If this figure is correct, the trade in illegal drugs constitutes 8 percent of all international commerce (while the sale of textiles makes up 7.5 percent and motor vehicles just 5.3 percent). And yet, prohibition itself is what makes the manufacture and sale of drugs so extraordinarily profitable. Those who earn their living in this way enjoy a 5,000 to 20,000 percent return on their investment, tax-free. Every relevant indicator of the drug trade—rates of drug use and interdiction, estimates of production, the purity of drugs on the street, etc.—shows that the government can do nothing to stop it as long as such profits exist (indeed, these profits are highly corrupting of law enforcement in any case). The crimes of the addict, to finance the stratospheric cost of his lifestyle, and the crimes of the dealer, to protect both his territory and his goods, are likewise the results of prohibition. A final irony, which seems good enough to be the work of Satan himself, is that the market we have created by our drug laws has become a steady source of revenue for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Shining Path, and others.

Even if we acknowledge that stopping drug use is a justifiable social goal, how does the financial cost of our war on drugs appear in light of the other challenges we face? Consider that it would require only a onetime expenditure of $2 billion to secure our commercial seaports against smuggled nuclear weapons. At present we have allocated a mere $93 million for this purpose. How will our prohibition of marijuana use look (this comes at a cost of $4 billion annually) if a new sun ever dawns over the port of Los Angeles? Or consider that the U.S. government can afford to spend only $2.3 billion each year on the reconstruction of Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are now regrouping. Warlords rule the countryside beyond the city limits of Kabul. Which is more important to us, reclaiming this part of the world for the forces of civilization or keeping cancer patients in Berkeley from relieving their nausea with marijuana? Our present use of government funds suggests an uncanny skewing—we might even say derangement—of our national priorities. Such a bizarre allocation of resources is sure to keep Afghanistan in ruins for many years to come. It will also leave Afghan farmers with no alternative but to grow opium. Happily for them, our drug laws still render this a highly profitable enterprise.

Anyone who believes that God is watching us from beyond the stars will feel that punishing peaceful men and women for their private pleasure is perfectly reasonable. We are now in the twenty-first century. Perhaps we should have better reasons for depriving our neighbors of their liberty at gunpoint. Given the magnitude of the real problems that confront us-—terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the spread of infectious disease, failing infrastructure, lack of adequate funds for education and health care, etc.—our war on sin is so outrageously unwise as to almost defy rational comment. How have we grown so blind to our deeper interests? And how have we managed to enact such policies with so little substantive debate?

Wise words indeed. Sam Harris is a philosopher, neuroscientist and the kind of atheist who takes no shit from anyone. The rest of his book tackles the irrationality of belief, the damage it can do to society and highlights the reasons why religious tolerance is certainly a bad thing. This book should be on everyone’s reading list, but if you’re looking for a more concise attack on irrational belief, I’d also recommend Sam Harris’s other book, Letter To A Christian Nation. Weighing in at just over 100 pages, this is more of an essay than a book, so you’ll finish it in one afternoon.

If you’re one of those rare kinds of people with an attention span longer than 10 minutes, you might also like to watch The Four Horsemen – a discussion between Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet & Christopher Hitchens. It’s two hours long, so you might want to preroll beforehand.

Post from: Synchronium

Sam Harris, Religion & Drugs

You Might Be Interested In:

• 5 Books That Really Will Expand Your Mind!
• Matthias Rath’s Bad Science Finally Catches Up With Him

Cannabis is now Class B

Don’t worry though! Our awesome Smoking Mixtures do the trick and are totally legal!
According to our government, amphetamine (speed) is as bad for us as cannabis – what other message could reclassification send?

Your typical cannabis smoker tends to

1. stay indoors
2. chillax
3. get through a lot of crisps

Your typical whizzkid tends to

1. go out a lot
2. get somewhat overconfident and aggressive
3. listen to awesome drum ‘n’ bass
4. approach the speed of light (literally*)

*Not literally

I’m not necessarily knocking amphetamine or it’s users, just pointing out that drugs are a class apart. Oh no, wait.

Check out the (now out of date) graph below, placing drugs from most harmful on the left to least harmful on the right.The score assigned to each drug takes into account harm to yourself and to society as a whole, and what’s that… alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than the class A drugs LSD and ecstasy! Considering that the link between cannabis and schizophrenia is as tenuous as ever (why isn’t the Netherlands one big psych ward?), why is our government ignoring it’s own scientists? Religion has more regard for evidence than Mr. Brown (and that’s saying something!) If you want to learn more about just how stupid our current classification system is, you can watch this episode of BBC’s Horizon, which tackles each drug in turn. (49 mins)

Post from: Synchronium

Cannabis Reclassification

You Might Be Interested In:

• Nutt Sacked
• Can I Get High Legally?
• Educators Don’t Want To Listen
• Legal Highs & Terrorism
• Music On Drugs
• Should Mephedrone Be Legal?
• Nutt Sacked Episode III – Revenge Of The Schizoids
• Nutt Sacked Episode II – Attack Of The MPs
• Shock Horror! Clubs Protect Own Interests!
• How To Make Hash – The Ultimate Guide!

Oh oh! It seems Salvia Divinorum has finally attracted the wrong kind of attention. Maybe. It seems no one really knows what’s going on.

EveryoneDoesIt, the big-brand headshop and legal highs retailer, received a letter on Oct 31st from the MHRA demanding they “immediately cease to sell, supply, promote or advertise all salvia divinourm products intended for human administration”. The MHRA, or the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, is a government-run group of people who keep an eye out for safety when it comes to drugs, among other things. So why are they getting involved? Salvia isn’t the kind of medicine a doctor would prescribe. Maybe that’s just it though, if they say it’s a medicine knowing full well it will never be prescribed, no one will possibly have access to it! So, is this a sneaky attempt to ban salvia without actually banning it? It sounds plausable, but why have they not published any news about this on their website? Unusual, considering they made a big deal about BZP last year.

Even more strange is the fact that no one else has been contacted! While EveryoneDoesIt have removed their salvia divinorum products just to be sure, my wholesalers have no problem getting hold of salvia, and Coffeesh0p hasn’t heard a thing! Perhaps it’s down to the way their salvia was marketed – as a legal high rather than an entheogenic botanical specimine. I’ve since added a bit more of a warning on our salvia category page, making sure people understand that.

So, no one’s really sure if this is real or not. It certainly seems real considering EveryoneDoesIt have removed their stock, but if it is, the MHRA have gone about this very strangely. No public statement, only contacting EveryoneDoesIt and no warning period in which to sell off remaining stock.

An elaborate hoax by one of their competitors, maybe? Don’t look at me!

Post from: Synchronium

Salvia Divinorum Banned in the UK?

You Might Be Interested In:

• Herbal Photography
• How To Grow Salvia Divinorum: A Rough Guide
• How To Make Salvia Divinorum Extract
• How To Use Salvia Divinorum
• Keeping on the Straight and Narrow
• Salvia Fans, Check This Out…
• Salvia Divinorum Presentation Part II
• Growing Salvia with Science
• Salvia Divinorum is NOT like LSD!
• Salvia Trip