LONDON: The UK government is introducing a bill that would bring a blanket ban on the production and supply of any drug that has a psychoactive effect in an effort to crack down on a wave of new recreational drugs.
The government wants to protect young people from the dangers of so-called ‘legal highs’ and target those who profit from these products, but some scientists have warned that the move could inhibit research into potentially useful new substances.
The plans, which aim to ban the “new generation of psychoactive drugs”, were announced in the Queen’s speech on 27 May 2015. The bill is so wide-reaching that products such as alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and certain medicines will be given a special exemption from the ban.
The landmark bill will fundamentally change the way we tackle new psychoactive substances — and put an end to the game of cat and mouse in which new drugs appear on the market more quickly than government can identify and ban them,” says Mike Penning, the minister for policing, crime, criminal justice and victims.
In recent years there has been a wave of previously unseen drugs being used recreationally, with the government banning more than 500 new drugs. These include synthetic cannabinoids, the amphetamine mephedrone and gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a central nervous system depressant.
An increasing number of deaths have been blamed on these substances; in 2013, there were 120 deaths involving new psychoactive substances in England, Scotland and Wales. In Scotland, there were 60 deaths in 2013 in which a new psychoactive substance was implicated, but for 55 of these deaths other substances were also implicated. However, these statistics have been described as misleading because many of the drugs classed as “new” or “legal” are already banned and or have been around for some time. For example, in 2013 the ‘new psychoactive substance’ most often implicated in these deaths was phenazepam, a strong benzodiazepine used in Russia as a medicine since the mid-1970s, which was banned in the UK in June 2012
