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: