Dumb Science: Recreational Drugs
By Comment team
I’m sure many of you have heard of the drug mephedrone. It was a ‘legal high’ that boomed around the autumn of 2009. Well, since banning it in April 2010, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has had its work cut out, with an average of one new drug a fortnight being released into the market. This perpetual pattern of a new drug emerging and then it being shortly banned was recently highlighted with the case of ‘Ivory Wave’: desoxypipradrol (2-DPMP) is now subject to the same controls as a Class B drug.
Why was it banned? Because its effects seem to represent those of amphetamines: users feel uplifted, chatty, and the urge to dance.
However, Ivory Wave is not cocaine; mephedrone is not ecstasy. Just because they are all drugs, that does not mean they are one and the same thing.
Many of you may be aware of the drug Ritalin, a prescription only drug used for curbing the effects of ADHD. Some students use it as a ‘study aid’ for added concentration during essays. This application for it may be frowned upon, but its use as treatment for a personality disorder is obviously not.
Now, Ivory Wave is the other way around. It is a recreational drug that may have strong medicinal benefits, due to its strikingly similar makeup to Ritalin. Ivory Wave’s effects are shorter, which may be appropriate for treating certain patients. In the right controlled dose, it could act as a new drug for sufferers of ADHD. But, due to the ban on production and importation, research into this is much more difficult.
That is just one drug. ‘Blanket banning’, a move now being implemented by Austria, puts restrictions and criminal sanctions on groups of similar drugs, regardless of their potential benefits. So now we may be missing out on a whole plethora of new treatments, due to a block on researching anything closely resembling banned substances.
As I said, Ivory Wave is not cocaine, so naturally it is not Ritalin either. However, missing the potential medicinal benefits of these drugs seems moronic. Their banning is purely ideological rather than scientific. I hope people would agree that the taking of drugs is a health issue rather than one of crime, especially when considering that the flotilla of legal highs are exactly that: devoid of any criminal sanctions.
Chris
20/10/2011 at 13:02
This article is truly silly and badly informed.
Any pharamaceutical company that wishes to experiment with a new drug can apply for a Home Office licence so to do.
Sativex has been produced from cannabis by exactly that route.
Anonymous
20/10/2011 at 17:43
Making a substance illegal, and thus harder to produce or import, slows the research process. It may not create an impenetrable barrier to the scientist, but it certainly adds a hefty amount of red tape. Due to this increased restriction, researchers may decide to not invest their time or resources into such a project. Of course, any media coverage highlighting scientists working on illegal drugs could also be detrimental to the process.
Blanket banning is the main issue of this article, as it undermines evidence-based policy.
Ollie
20/10/2011 at 20:48
This article will inspire all kinds of debate, but I feel it’s actually missing the point a little; if a substance is proven safe for consumption regardless of medical benefit, then why impose a ban? It would seem there is a fundamental legal or moral standpoint that denies people the right to consume or imbibe mind-altering substances, and that’s what needs to be addressed.
Anonymous
20/10/2011 at 21:21
Due to the nature of the ‘Dumb Science’ feature, the author was unable to explore the moral or deeper philosophical ramifications of drug policy.
Ostensibly, drug policy is a fairly niche area of law-making. Upon inspection however, it proliferates into many different domains of philosophy: legal, human rights, moral etc.
The glaring contradiction to human rights is obvious. Why shouldn’t one be able to consume drugs, as long as no significant harm comes to others or society at large?
That is an exceptionally difficult debate to instigate, and one that cannot hope to be started here.
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