This past week, there has been a series of devastating firebomb attacks on a number of pubs in the centre of Birmingham. These attacks were carried out by a militant Islamic group seeking to put an end to the “evils of alcohol”, as it is forbidden by their religion. In the weeks leading up to the attacks, each of the pubs targeted was issued a warning by the group, threatening serious consequences for those that didn’t shut down immediately. Other pubs in Birmingham have received a similar warning.

The group has received sympathy and support from those addicted to the drug and the family and friends of those affected by alcohol.

Alcohol is a volatile and extremely flammable liquid that is used as an industrial solvent. Users commonly mix it with other liquids, or “soft drinks”, to mask the unpleasant taste and to prevent chemical burns to their mouth and throat. This mixture is referred to as a “hard drink”, drawing attention to the underlying violence and aggression associated with Britain’s depraved drink culture. Side effects such as dizziness, confusion, headaches and depression are reported by the majority of drinkers, especially following large doses.

The attacks have highlighted the addictive nature of alcohol and the danger it poses to society. Birmingham officials have responded by calling for the closure of all pubs in the city and trying to fast track legislation for a nationwide ban on alcohol.

Wut?!

Ahhhhhhhhh, just kidding! Kind of.

If you replace Birmingham with Ireland, militant Islamic group with paramilitary “vigilante” group known as the “Republican Action Against Drugs”, pub with headshop and alcohol with legal highs, then this is exactly the kind of bullshit story you might have read about these past few weeks.

Basically, a load of illegal drug dealers thinly veiled as a vigilante group are going round burning headshops down and in one case shooting someone who sold legal highs from his shop. These are acts of terrorism.

First off, the fact that these people are illegal drug dealers is speculation, but since half a million euros was found in the burnt out husk of just one of these headshops, it’s not hard to find a motive. They claim they’re against drugs in general, but no one who feels that drugs are so morally wrong would go out and shoot someone – a far more immoral crime. They’re either completely moral, completely immoral or completely nuts. The situation is chillingly similar to that Christian loon who shot that abortion doctor in the US.

"Hey! Guys! Get a hit of this crazy shit! Bring crisps."

That aside, the biggest issue is how these blatant acts of terrorism are being reported.  Just like my bullshit news story above (c’mon, you fell for it at least for a few seconds, right?), the reports on these headshop fires and shootings somehow manage to segue past the whole terrorism thing to focus on just how bad for us these shops are. Check out these quotes from the Irish Times:

On Friday, the Nirvana head shop and a number of neighbouring outlets on Capel Street were destroyed in a fire which began around the same time local residents reported hearing a loud bang coming from the outlet at 6am on Friday.

Gardaí are treating the Capel Street fire as arson although the exact cause of the blaze may never be known because most of the building has had to be demolished for safety reasons.

Although a link between the two fires has not yet been established there has been speculation that the incidents are related to a widespread campaign to outlaw such outlets.

Regulations which will outlaw a range of products sold as legal highs in head shops across the State are expected to be introduced later this year.

However, Mr Costello today called for legislation to be brought forward to outlaw such products within weeks.

“There has been real anger in the local community over the failure of the authorities to act in relation to head shops because a lot of young people around the area are customers buying products from them which mimic illegal drugs.

“It certainly seems too much of a coincidence that there has been two such fires within days, and there is a real concern that these shops are being targeted, and there is a worry that not enough action is being taken either to stop the selling of these products or to protect people living near head shops who could be hurt in a fire,” he added. (My emphasis)

What the hell, Mr Costello? Go and catch these terrorists! Not only does no one seem to care, but banning these products literally diverts more profit to people that support this kind of senseless violence.

Mephedrone isn’t just another obscure research chemical. Everyone’s at it, all the time. Despite the media scare stories, over 20% of mephedrone users polled on Drugs Forum take more than 10g each month, with just under half of those consuming over 20g.  A lot of replies to that thread also reveal how quickly usage can escalate, meaning those results are probably on the conservative side. “More acceptable than weed”, some have been saying. “Even my non-druggie friends are doing it!”

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.

This week has been a massive middle finger not only to every single scientist, but also to legal highs users all across the UK. Today, I’m going to be moaning about both.

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.

This week, clubs in Edinburgh have banned legal highs, just in case someone dies! If they catch you getting high legally inside, you could get barred for up to 3 months. That’s the gist of the story, as reported by The Sun and a few smaller news sites. Allow me to read between the lines…

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:

Harry Pothead

I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Harry Potter franchise, but I’ve seen all the films at some point and I’ve read the first book when I was about *this* big. So, this week, me ‘n’ the misses went to see the new Harry Potter film at the IMAX in Birmingham, where the effects were special and there were 150% the usual amount of dimensions (at least for the beginning of the film).

I’m sure we’ve all seen this “Harry Pothead” picture (you should have, it’s about as old as the Internet), but this latest film was jam-packed with drugs references all by itself. Firstly, they all got pissed down the pub, at which point Hermione got frisky and a million parents all cried out at once… and were then suddenly quoted in a New York Times article, but that wasn’t even the best bit. Some time later on, this girl that fancies Harry leaves some chocolates on his bed, but then Harry’s mate Ron (who looks exactly like my brother, I shit you not!) eats them all. Unbeknownst to Ron, these chocolates contain some kind of love potion. When Harry finds Ron later on, Ron is completely off his tits, as though he’d snorted 300 mg of MDMA about half an hour before. He tells everyone how much he loves them, hugs cushions and generally makes an arse of himself. It’s odd that none of the aforementioned parents seemed to mind about this, but a little bit of underage drinking is a moral outrage. If only that mindset transferred over to real life…

Yet another parallel between magic and drugs was drawn when Harry consumed some of his “luck potion”, which magically seemed to make him feel rather coked up – talkative, inappropriate and overly confident.  Perhaps there’s some deeper message here, showing us that everyone gets up to this kind of shit once they’re old enough? Or perhaps, JayKay Rowling was just battered when she wrote it?

The final point worth mentioning is when Harry’s new teacher suspiciously harvests some leaves and mentions their potential black market price, while reminding us all that such topics of discussion are hypothetical. Even if he was talking about their usefulness as a magic reagent, I still like to think he might roll one up at the end of a hard day’s teaching.

Spiritplants Radio

My mix on Spiritplants Radio is now online in their archives in case you missed it the first time round.  You can listen to it right here:

Drugs Forum

Drugs-Forum is currently making a few changes, ranging from the entire structure of the site, to a bit of spring cleaning. Somewhere in there falls the task of designing a new logo, which I’ve had a crack at. It seems a real possibility that it might get used, pending a few minor changes. Here’s the current version:

Unfortunately, it’ll be much smaller if it’s actually used, so a big part of the design process has been taken up by trying to make it look clear at a smaller size. I’ve shown it here bigger because it looks even better.

As usual, comments & criticism welcome!

Since George Lamb couldn’t investigate his way out of a paper bag, I got in touch with Matt Bowden, the guy behind BZP, for a bit more of an in-depth commentary. If you never watched Can I Get High Legally?, now would be a good time to check it out. Matt is interviewed towards the end, but is barely given the chance to speak. Actually, he only agreed to speak to them on the condition that they mention his Aroma product and Club Stargate website, where you can earn money by getting your mates to buy stuff. I know since it’s the BBC that they couldn’t actually mention these things, but then why did they agree to it? That’s just not nice.

So, anyway, here’s what Matt has to say:

My points all simply come back to quoting proven research. Sure, BZP has risks. We analysed the risk after 10 million exposures in a country small enough that you can contact every hospital and A & D clinic to look for adverse events related to the ten million exposures (26 million pills consumed over 8.5 years) and learned that it was not causative in any reported deaths or significant lasting injuries and had not contributed to the burden on the alcohol and drug treatment industries. Nobody in the country had complained anywhere of addiction to the drug.

Nobody had ever been admitted to hospital or even presented at an emergency department who had followed the instructions on the packet and in every case where there was a hospital admission, the subject had well over the legal alcohol limit (for driving) as well. In some cases where seizures were reported they were up to 15 times over the alcohol limit! In other words they were in very poor shape even without the BZP.

There was one fatality which involved BZP but on a New Years Eve and it was combined with heroic doses of ecstasy, LSD and again mammoth quantities of alcohol. BZP was not considered by the medical examiners on the night to be causative.

It is not completely safe, but then neither is getting out of bed in the morning. It is considered risky to take with ecstasy and/or large amounts of alcohol, but if taken as directed by sensible manufacturers, the risks are lower than many other normal everyday human activities such as a trip to the beach, driving in heavy traffic or a passenger flight in a 747.

The risks are lower than activities such as surgery in a public hospital, a trip to the doctor, or, as our then-Prime Minister suggested young people do instead of taking party pills, a walk in one of our national parks, where poorly experienced trampers freeze to their deaths every year!

Some excellent facts and figures there. It’s just a shame I had to be the one to report them.

Fuck you, George Lamb.

Yep!

Last Thursday at 9pm, a programme being shown on BBC3 called “Can I get High Legally?” caught my interest. Not having a TV ourselves, we patiently waited for it to become available on iPlayer whilst the orders poured in – a massive amount, far more than usual. Something in the programme had obviously made legal highs seem pretty appealing. Or had it?

Our orders per day. Guess when the documentary was on.

George Lamb was presenting, which made me wary from the outset. What can this uber-trendy, slightly poncy metrosexual reminiscent of other Camden boys like Noel Fielding and Russell Brand have to say about the science and safety of legal highs? Well, as it turns out, nothing. The description of the programme on the BBC website claims that “George Lamb dives into the world of legal highs, meeting users and sellers, finding out why they are legal and if this means they can also be called safe”. In actual fact, the programme consisted mainly of Lamby boy wandering round Camden (where else?) looking shocked. You can buy legal highs in shops? There’s proper websites selling them? It all actually looks professional? That’s because they’re legal, idiot. We’ve already established that. Unless he feels that the purpose of the programme was to answer the question in the title, which seems pretty pointless – “Can I get high legally?” – well yes, of course you can.

This brings me on to my first major issue with the programme (and believe me, there were many, but I’ll only rant about a select few here); where were the mentions of alcohol and tobacco? They literally did not get mentioned once, which I think is pretty appalling. Holy shit George, did you know you can just wander in off the street and buy a pint? And there’s proper shops selling it? Regardless of one’s opinion about the “differences” between drugs and alcohol, it is a mind altering substance that you can buy legally and with minimal restrictions, just like the legal highs George Lamb is horrified to see available, displayed in attractive ways and with nice pictures on the packets to entice customers. What about the Martini advert with George Clooney and all the sexy women? Why is that different? What about all the casual references equating getting drunk with having a good time in popular media? Why is all of that OK, in fact so OK that it doesn’t even get a mention? People just do not see that intoxication is intoxication, and if one kind is acceptable then we need to think about why. George Lamb voices his concerns throughout the programme that legal highs are so dangerous precisely because they’re legal – because that means everyone thinks they’re safe and isn’t careful enough. I think that is a valid point, but where it applies most strongly is with alcohol and tobacco, substances that most people don’t even consider to be “drugs”. How many deaths are there per year from legal highs, George, compared to alcohol and tobacco?

These are the kinds of questions he should have been answering, which brings me onto my second point. It’s hard to pin down, but there was just a general lack of substance. Where were the statistics, the graphs, the interviews lasting more than 20 seconds, the facts? This programme, these questions, had such potential, but it just wasn’t in depth enough. He doesn’t ask the right questions, he misunderstands or misrepresents (or both) the points made by the experts and he whizzes through the whole thing not really covering anything. They set up a night out, for example, where a group of three students were to take some legal highs and record their experiences throughout the night. What we in fact got was three sweaty faced goons grinning into the camera, edited with some generic “rave” footage. What did they take? Pretty basic question. How much did they take? Were they drinking alcohol? How long after ingestion was the footage filmed? Why didn’t the BBC choose to show more than 3 or 4 seconds of footage at a time so that we could actually get a look at them – were they sweating, slurring, delirious? We didn’t get the answer to any of these questions and considering that this was presented as a case study of people taking legal highs, I think it’s pretty shocking journalism. But perhaps I’m being unfair – we did learn during a meeting with Lamby in a greasy spoon the next day that they felt a bit rough. Well big woop.

Another massive misrepresentation was the case study involving Guernsey. Guernsey, for those of you who don’t know, is mega strict on illegal drugs. This legislation has obviously been highly successful as they now have a massive problem with legal highs, as the teenagers and young adults (because it is mostly them) can’t get hold of the real stuff. George Lamb didn’t quite seem to be able to make his mind up here – whilst he explains how unusual the situation is there and seems pretty sure that it’s because of the super tough drug laws, he then questions teenagers on the street and expects us to be shocked that they’ve all tried legal highs. Of course they’ve all tried legal highs, they all take them there, that’s the whole point and why you went Guernsey! It’s not representational of the population at large so I really didn’t get the point of this section at all. His condescending attitude towards users of legal highs also really pissed me off. He got down with the kids and joined them in their car whilst they smoked some kind of legal smoking mix (probably Spice) from their hand-crafted Coke bottle bong (we’ve all been there) and questioned them about the safety of what they were doing. When they replied that they were aware that it was risky, he was incredulous – fancy knowing that something you’re doing is risky and doing it anyway, how stupid, right? Right? Well, no. Unless Lamby boy’s never crossed the road, got in a car, lit up a fag or basically done anything ever, he’s being a total hypocrite. As it turns out, he actually admits to having taken cocaine and ecstasy during the program, making his hypocrisy even more apparent. Being aware of the risks of something and doing it anyway doesn’t make you an idiot, it means you’ve considered the risks and decided they’re minimal, or at least minimal compared to the benefits. Yes, an aeroplane might crash, but you want to go on holiday, and it’ll probably be fine. People make these kind of decisions every day.

Another aspect of the programme boasted about in the description is that Lamb talks to “sellers”. Well, he actually talks to one, and he was a complete arsehole about it. He wanders into shops and rings people up wanting to talk to them on camera right now, and then treats it as some kind of admission of wrong-doing when they say no. Finally, Chris from Potseeds.co.uk, a friend of ours, agrees to talk to him and George is off to Potseeds HQ in Totnes. The way it is edited makes Chris look like a lone man who sells drugs out of a shed, rather than the manager of a busy, successful and completely above board business, and Lamb’s tone is mocking throughout. He picks up packets off the shelves, laughing at their funny names, in a scene akin to a crap drugs education lesson at school where you’re warned off drugs as “only dopes smoke dope”. The worst bit though is when Lamb chooses to assess what Chris has said in the voiceover, recorded after he’s left Totnes, rather than addressing his criticisms to him when he has a chance to reply. Chris hesitated, we are told, which obviously makes him a bastard and a liar and a downright horrible human being (or words to that effect). Or, it just makes him a normal man who isn’t trained for TV, who knows every single syllable he utters will be analysed to death and used against himself and the entire legal highs industry.

The final bit of the programme that really got my goat actually had the potential to be very interesting. Lamb goes to speak to an actual scientist (just one though – toxicologist Dr. John Ramsey from St George’s College at the University of London) about legal highs and he is told that MDMA is probably safer than many legal highs as it’s been around for such a long time we know how to deal with it. Well, I totally agree – pure, pharmaceutical-grade MDMA is almost definitely safer than legal highs. In fact, it’s one of the safest drugs around, so saying that it’s safer than legal highs is kind of a non point – it’s also safer than alcohol. But, more importantly, pure, pharmaceutical-grade MDMA is not what we should be talking about here – it’s not what is available in clubs or pubs or whatever to the average customer. Ecstasy, MDMA’s dirty little sister, is what must be considered when you compare illegal drugs to legal drugs, as that is the alternative. Even street bought MDMA is nowhere near 100% MDMA. This leads me on to the final, and in my opinion, worst moment of this documentary, where George Lamb fucks up yet another incredible chance to actually learn something from someone who knows what they’re talking about. He’s talking to Matt Bowden (who we also spoke to later for comment), the guy who made BZP big in New Zealand, as a reaction to the massive crystal meth problem they have there. Matt categorically says that BZP is not “safe”, it’s “safer”, but if people are going to do it, “safer” is better than nothing – my sentiment exactly. At this point Lamb demonstrates a display of ignorance of Brass Eye proportions when he says that he’s been told that “taking an ecstasy” is safer than taking legal highs. By this point I was practically screaming at the screen, and I bet I don’t need to tell you why as I’m sure you all have a much higher IQ than Lamby evidently does – the scientist said MDMA, for christ’s sake, not ecstasy, and that’s a pretty fucking important difference. After this, Lamb takes salvia and makes a total tit of himself but I was sick of his bullshit by then (although I did notice that he didn’t even explain what salvia was… considering that he’d been talking about synthetic legal highs all the way through it might be important to mention that salvia is a plant, and is in no way a legal high).

I had many more complaints about this programme, from the trivial (like Lamby’s stupid highlights/streaks/whatever the hell they are) to the not-so-trivial (what about all the legal highs out there that aren’t synthetic? They didn’t get a mention at all, other than salvia which he didn’t differentiate from everything else he’d been talking about), but those are the main ones. I wouldn’t mind if the programme had concluded that legal highs were all bad, as long as it was based on some interesting, reliable evidence. As it was, there wasn’t really a conclusion at all, and I felt like I hadn’t learned anything. There were some interesting ideas (following users on a night out, for example) and some very interesting contributors. It’s a great topic and, as legal highs become more prevalent, something that needs to be discussed, but uninformed dirge like this contributes nothing other than yet more misunderstandings. Given the BBC’s track record, with programmes like Horizon definitively stating that popular legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than MDMA and cannabis (watch that episode here), I had high hopes that this programme would give a well researched, balanced insight into the legal highs industry. Instead, we got a overgrown gawky teenager marvelling at “druggies” and consistently boasting about his own supposed experience with illegal drugs (which did nothing but make him look like a hypocrite), topped off with an image of salvia use no more insightful than “woah, man”. Disappointing work, BBC (But thanks for the extra sales )

Hopefully I can find a video of this somewhere to post up here, but no luck yet.

UPDATE: Here it is! Unfortunately, the site it’s hosted on will probably try and sell you a girlfriend or something before you can actually watch the video. Click the red play button and close the pop up window if one appears. Then, the play button turns green. Click it again and you can watch the entire thing:

So, I was having a browse round Drug Education News – a blog all about the Drug Education Forum, who are apparently “an umbrella body for national organisations committed to improving drug education in England” – and came across a post about legal highs. Admittedly, this is a repost of a member’s briefing from DrugScope, so not their own words, but that’s not why I have a problem with them. Have a read:

Devon-based Children’s Society projects are concerned about an increase in the availability of these [legal highs] substances and the use of them by young people in their area. This increase in use has been mirrored by recent articles in national press and sector publications, putting forward a range of limited research and anecdotal evidence – with particular attention paid to a few users who have experienced sometimes lethal side effects.

Steven Hawker, Young People’s Drug and Alcohol Worker at The Children’s Society Checkpoint project in Torquay, expressed concern about the way young people view these drugs and the way professionals communicate about them. “While we feel there is some advantage in highlighting specific risks and effects of individual legal highs, it concerns me there is very little literature highlighting the general risks of these substances”, he said. “Of particular concern are inexperienced substance users who may take the view that legal equals safe and that this may impact on them consuming potentially large amounts of stimulants or hallucinogens.”

The Children’s Society would be interested if any organisation has:

• produced any awareness campaigns in their area
• seen significant rises in use
• become aware of specific negative effects of particular drugs.

The Children’s Society would also welcome any thoughts on how young people should be made aware of the potential risks of legal highs, particularly substances where research into the risks of short and long-term use is limited.

Fair enough, sort of. These people are concerned for their kids, but that still doesn’t excuse the hypocrisy subtly interwoven into the fabric of their terror. I’m all for education, raising awareness and semi-anonymously informing people of their mistakes via the internet, so I thought I’d post a little comment outlining my opinion. It went something like this:

What about alcohol and tobacco? By the same reasoning employed above, their legality also suggests to kids they’re safe. In a similar vein, no respectable retailer of these legal alternatives to illegal drugs would sell them to anyone under the age of 18.

I agree that more research into these types of substance should be done, so that we know what’s safe to take and what isn’t. I can assure you though, that acohol and tobacco would end up much further towards the unsafe end of the spectrum.

Am I being a dick? No. Am I being beligerant? No. Am I furthering discussion on the topic? Fuck yeah! So why the hell did they delete my comment?! It seems to me the Drug Education News blog (notice I’m not linking to them for this very reason) simply do not want to listen when it comes to differing opinion.

And here was me thinking education was all about listening to what other people had to say in order to reinforce or refute your current understanding. At the very least, they could have let the comment stay and responded to it with a well reasoned argument about why I’m wrong. A pretty poor show, overall.

Blog Commenting In General

Commenting on blogs is a great idea if you have a site or blog of your own. The majority of blogs allow you to leave your URL along with your comment, allowing visitors to click through to your site, particularly if you have something interesting to say. Unfortunately for this reason, a comment system is subject to a lot of spam, but plugins for your blog can help stop those. This blog gets tonnes of spam comments from unrelated sites, but interestingly, I do get the ocassional legal highs site in there. It’s just a shame that they leave the same spammy message on multiple blog posts that add nothing to the discussion. As a result, they end up being marked as spam not only by me, but any subsequent blog that uses this plugin! NextGenBuzz & SalviaSociety are two examples – their aggressive spam tactics have ended up not only being a waste of time, but actually hurting their site’s reputation. Great going, guys!

Competition Winner

This week’s Hypnotic Pills winner is BFitzpatric! Please email me back or comment on this post before May 9th to claim your prize. Also, last week’s winner never got in touch, so I still have one more pack to give away! For details on how these can be yours, check out this post.

Oh, and it was my birthday yesterday. Huzzah!

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)