Re:Testing Legal Highs Would Save Lives
by Nursie on Sunday November 30, 2014 @09:26AM
(#8676871)
The NPS market is very interesting. There are a small proportion of users who are genuinely into NPS or RCs. These are people who want to try new things, who are fascinated by what happens if you tweak the molecule this way or that way, or you stick this extra bit on here and wow... Not all are chemistry geeks but some are, other just find it interesting, may have spiritual reasons for investigating all avenues etc. For this group legality is often a secondary concern compared to novelty.
Then there are the majority of the users, who are looking for a legal alternative to <insert popular drug here>, who effectively fund the production and marketing of the scene, and without whom the first group would not have such an easy time of it. The main concerns with this group are legality and ease of access.
The first group are likely to have their use under control, to be very clued in about allergy tests, measured doses, side effects mitigation etc. They may have lapses into unhealthy use patterns but generally are in control. They are served well by the current system and find services like WEDINOS invaluable.
The second group tend to be far less interested in what they're doing, may not be educated about any of it, probably aren't part of an online community to ask for help, they may even buy into the fallacy that legal == safe. They are effectively playing russian roulette. One of the cases mentioned in the article was one of these - that kid from Southampton died from taking over a gram of aMT. The dose range for that substance is usually around 30-50mg, the kid took 20 times that and died.
This group would be best served by legalisation of things that are known to be mostly safe. MDMA (or some of its safer derivatives like MBDB), cannabis etc.
All this said, if any of the many bans were effective at stopping the proliferation of NPS, it's not actually going to help anyone, because you'll just end up back at square one - kids buying unknown substances of unknown purity from unknown sources.
Then there are the majority of the users, who are looking for a legal alternative to <insert popular drug here>, who effectively fund the production and marketing of the scene, and without whom the first group would not have such an easy time of it. The main concerns with this group are legality and ease of access.
The first group are likely to have their use under control, to be very clued in about allergy tests, measured doses, side effects mitigation etc. They may have lapses into unhealthy use patterns but generally are in control. They are served well by the current system and find services like WEDINOS invaluable.
The second group tend to be far less interested in what they're doing, may not be educated about any of it, probably aren't part of an online community to ask for help, they may even buy into the fallacy that legal == safe. They are effectively playing russian roulette. One of the cases mentioned in the article was one of these - that kid from Southampton died from taking over a gram of aMT. The dose range for that substance is usually around 30-50mg, the kid took 20 times that and died.
This group would be best served by legalisation of things that are known to be mostly safe. MDMA (or some of its safer derivatives like MBDB), cannabis etc.
All this said, if any of the many bans were effective at stopping the proliferation of NPS, it's not actually going to help anyone, because you'll just end up back at square one - kids buying unknown substances of unknown purity from unknown sources.