As a tragic toll of young lives grows, is it time for a ban on 'legal highs'?

Every generation has their drug of choice.

In the 1990s it was ecstasy. In the 1960s it was LSD. Further back,

cannabis helped fuel the Roaring Twenties and at the turn of the 19th century, there were few bigger businesses than the opium trade. Today

it's mephedrone

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In just over a year the legal high known as "miaow miaow" has become

one of the most widely used recreational drugs in Britain.

Cheap and easily available on the internet, mephedrone has been

christened the country's "favourite new drug".

The thousands who use it each week are already well versed in the side-effects, from the headaches to the palpitations, nausea and nose bleeds, but following the deaths of two teenagers thought to have taken the drug on a night out, an even darker side to mephedrone has now hit the headlines.

"Certainly there has been a growth in the sale and use of legal highs in the past three or four years," says Dr David Crowther, of Sheffield Hallam University's Biomedical Research Centre.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"A number of my students are in the middle of projects looking at

different aspects of these substances which, while legal, are

chemically related to crystal meth and ecstasy.

"Like any chemically manufactured drug, even penicillin, the reaction of individuals can vary widely."

In the wake of the deaths of Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, in Scunthorpe on Monday and with an inquest yesterday confirming a 46-year-old man from East Sussex died from mephedrone poisoning last month, calls for the drug to be banned have grown.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is to issue a report into a group of legal highs, including mephedrone, at the end of this month, with Government Ministers promising to take "immediate action" based on the advice. However, some fear it may be too little too late.

The Liberal Democrats said there had been "inordinate delays" in the ACMD's research into the drug as a result of fall-out from the sacking of its chairman, Professor David Nutt, last year and, before the

findings are even known, the Tories have pledged to introduce a new

system allowing legal highs to be banned for up to a year while they were being analysed.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But would a ban be workable and is legislation the right weapon to use in the war against drugs?

YES: If it could happen to her then it could happen to anyone

April 26, 2009 started out like every other Sunday, but it ended with my family's peaceful life shattered. I was in the kitchen making lunch when the police knocked at the door. My beautiful, intelligent daughter Hester was dead.

She had been at a party the previous night where she had taken half a dose of the then legal high GBL and in the early hours of the morning her young life was snuffed out.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Hester was 21, she was very sociable, the life and soul of any party, but she was also a sensible young women. She was studying molecular medicine at the University of Sussex and was heading for a First Class degree.

She knew about the dangers of drugs. We found a card from her recently tucked away in a drawer which she had written to her younger brother. In it she told him how sweet he was and what a great future he had ahead of him. She also told him some of things he shouldn't do in life. One of them was drugs.

Hester wasn't a regular user, she was as far removed from the image of an addict as it's possible to be. Hester took that legal high because she thought it was safe. It wasn't. She played Russian roulette and she lost.

In the days, weeks and months following her death, I have tried to understand not only what makes people take legal highs, but what we can do to stop any more parents having to attend their child's funeral. If it could happen to Hester, it could happen to anyone.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It is absolutely unbelievable how widespread the use of legal highs is. A recent survey for Mixmag magazine found four out of 10 of those surveyed had tried it and a third had taken it within the previous

month. One in six said they took it every week.

I know young people have and always will experiment, but the phenomenon of legal highs defies belief.

The problem is escalating and action needs to be taken.

Bans have been talked about before, but more often than not it has been in the context of targeting a single substance. The problem with this approach is that it raises the profile of an individual drug and may, in fact, have the effect of making it even more popular.

However, we must look at what can be done, not what can't be done and we need to take our lead from countries like Germany and America which are further down the road when it comes to dealing with legal highs.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In both those countries interim bans are now in operation. Effectively, this means that all new legal highs which come on to the market go into a basket and are automatically classed as illegal for the following 12 months.

This allows enough time for each substance to be rigorously tested and for experts to decide how safe or not they are.

The only hurdle to introducing a similar interim ban in this country is the will of Government Ministers and the 100,000 needed to pay for extra testing equipment.

To me, that doesn't sound like a lot of money. However, politicians do now seem to be waking up to the problem and I am hopeful there could be a positive decision as early as next week.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

We have no choice but to do something, because the law as it stands is completely inadequate. The substance Hester took was banned at the end of last year with those found guilty of dealing it facing up to 14 years in prison.

However, there are dozens of other similar substances which can be bought for a few pounds on the internet. Most of these legal highs seem to be paint stripper or fertiliser, never intended for human

consumption, but which are taken by thousands of people each week.

The interim ban must not be introduced in isolation. There is also a real need to raise awareness. Parents haven't got the faintest clue what legal highs are and the dangers they pose and since Hester's death I have also met many talented academics who are similarly unaware.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There are small pockets of people carrying out vital research into this whole area and if we are to benefit from their work, we need to bring them together and pool our wisdom.

I lost a daughter, my other three children lost a sister. I am in touch with other parents in the same situation and we have had so many wonderful messages of support, but I don't know how to describe the feeling of loss. When someone as wonderful as Hester disappears from your life, it's something you can never fully come to terms with.

However, I know Hester wouldn't want me to sit and lament, she would have wanted me to do something dynamic. Just before she died, she told

me how she had managed to secure a job working for the blind in a hospital where she would hold their hands and be their eyes for the summer.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

She was going to save lives, but GBL denied her that opportunity. This is my way of helping her to still achieve those goals.

Maryon Stewart, whose 21-year-old daughter Hester died after taking a legal high last year. The drug, GBL, has since been banned.

NO: Knee-jerk reaction could do more harm than good

I got my first call at 5.30am on Wednesday morning and since then the phone has not stopped ringing.

The death of two teenagers after apparently taking mephedrone during a night out is tragic, but before the story runs out of control we need to calm down and take stock.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Unfortunately, there is a real danger that the facts concerning legal highs and the sensible views of informed and intelligent people will once again end up buried beneath a media furore and the frenzy of politicians keen to jump on a pre-election bandwagon.

A knee-jerk response may satisfy the initial vocal calls for something to be done, for our children to be protected and for society to be made a safer place, but a ban may do little more than that. Once the front pages have moved on to other stories, we may well be left picking up the pieces of a badly thought-out decision and one which may, in fact, increase the potential harm of legal highs rather than reduce them.

First we need to be clear. Mephedrone is not the new big threat to

humanity. It is not even a significant threat to the lives of users – given the high levels of use, we would have seen far more deaths if

that were the case.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Being honest and realistic about the true level of risk is vital. It is perhaps worth remembering the case of Leah Betts. In 1995, just a few days after her 18th birthday, the Essex schoolgirl took an ecstasy tablet. Four hours later she slipped into a coma from which she never recovered. The photograph of her lying in a hospital bed was a powerful image and so began a media onslaught to outlaw ecstasy. Facts went out of the window and in their place came hysteria. The inquest heard the teenager had indeed taken ecstasy, but in the space of 90 minutes she had also drunk 15 pints of water. Ravers had been encouraged to drink water to avoid the effects of dehydration. Leah had drunk too much and died of water intoxication.

Yes, the ecstasy tablet had played a part, but the chance to do any real good had been lost amid lurid headlines.

Deaths from the use of illegal drugs are always massively over

reported. Yesterday, 35,000 children across the world died from starvation and malnutrition, 5,000 died from drinking dirty water and even in this country, the deaths each day linked to alcohol and tobacco far outweigh those who die from drugs.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Also, we need to stop kidding ourselves that simply by making a

substance illegal we will necessarily reduce consumption. How many teenagers binge on vodka before they are 18? How many put themselves in dangerous and occasionally life-threatening situations after a night of heavy drinking long before they are legally allowed to buy alcohol.

People drink and take drugs for many different reasons and if we are to address the real underlying issues, we need to stop assuming that they only take mephedrone because it is legal and banning it would rid us of the problem.

Guernsey is good example. Authorities in the Channel Islands last year banned the importation of legal highs and are moving closer to

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

reclassifying mephedrone as a class A drug. It is too early to say what effect the legislation has had, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it has put the price up from 10 a gram to 60-80 a gram and consequently heavy users are now turning to crime to fund their habit. Organised crime has taken over distribution (there are no guns on Guernsey, so samurai swords are the order of the day for fighting turf wars).

This cannot possibly have made things better for the good citizens of Guernsey and I would hope the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the UK takes this evidence into account.

So what do we do? Education is absolutely the key and we need to make users, young or old, aware of what the relative dangers are.

We also need to take a big step back, give the ACMD true independence and put pressure on the Government to accept and act on their findings. The sacking of Professor David Nutt as head of the organisation last year after he criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B and dared to suggest Ministers had devalued and distorted evidence, showed just how difficult having rational conversations about drugs has become.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The ACMD was set up as a body of independent experts and their advice mustn't be swept under the carpet simply because it doesn't suit the political mood of any given day. Crucially, its remit must also be extended to look at the effects of alcohol and tobacco. The fact it

doesn't look at these two legal drugs is not just absurd, but

criminally negligent.

Scaremongering about mephedrone is not only unhelpful, but it potentially detracts attention from the real problem drugs and if we are to make any real difference, we must not allow ourselves to be sidetracked by a political and media whim.

Danny Kushlick is head of policy at Transform Drug Policy Federation, which calls for regulation rather than prohibition of drugs.

Mephedrone: the facts

Other names: M-CAT, MC, miaow miaow.

Effects: Similar to amphetamines and ecstasy.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mephedrone is a stimulant drug producing feelings of euphoria,

alertness, talkativeness and empathy. However, it can also cause

anxiety and paranoid states.

Appearance: A white/yellowish powder which is usually snorted, but can also be obtained in pills and capsules.

Side effects: Headaches, palpitations, nausea, high blood pressure, burning throat, nosebleeds, purple joints, especially

knees and hands. Other side-effects include psychosis, weight loss and insomnia.

Related topics: