Party Vibe

Just had a look last night at the accompanying 84 page govt report (which isn’t even just from ACMD but from a combination of ACMD, DOH/NHS, NCA as well as represenatives from the Councils and Scotland/NI) – even that openly states a blanket ban would not work miracles and could in the short term make matters worse.

It was one of a variety of options considered including NZ-style testing, although “do nothing” was not one of them.

It does refer heavily to the evidence gathered after the fiasco with legal cathinones (including accepting that one reason they became popular was due to other substances being made illegal), more recent issues with retail outlets selling to underage/less responsible users; and also incidents elsewhere in the EU and internationally.

Unfortunately I also get the impression this “get tough” law is part of “horsetrading” about whether the UK remains in the EU or not – or if it leaves showing that it can still produce and enforce compatible “European” legislation.

Athough it might not seem like it the UK had until recently much more lenient approaches to NPS supply than many other European nations, even amongst those which do not tolerate the use of other controlled substances in any form). Norway (which isn’t in the EU but is of course geographically very much in Europe) has harsher laws.

I would attach the report here but the attachment function isn’t working and its not a good idea to directly link this type of .gov report to here as NCA have more involvement with it..

unfortunately I’ve seen as recently as the 1990s otherwise highly intelligent folk arguing online that “the only reason Prohibition didn’t work is the authorities lacked the resourcing and surveillance technology” – these people weren’t all American either and it was back in the days when you normally had to be above average intelligence to even use the Internet – not long after I got busted myself for using it myself as it was a crime in my country until around 1994 unless you had more than one University degree and/or enough money to pay for the cost of using it.

at least some bits of USA are trying to make amends for their part in proliferating this madness’ although the USA is a physically large country where there isn’t so much Angst about conducting social experiments on living humans in modern times (which is what most of the “decriminalisation” initiatives ultimately are; although the areas where they are spending the taxes on health and social care make perfect sense, its what many European nations have done for decades).

I’ve also noticed that most of the “tolerant” areas seem to be in less affluent parts of the country (or bits that were once affluent but have been overshadowed by other nearby regions).

Then again drugs prohibition / control laws aren’t equally popular in all EU nations or even across regions of the same country (including the “liberal” nations like NL; although their “Zero tolerance” is in reality a very carefully socially engineered type of legislation that makes even low to middle level dealing unprofitable if the dealer is caught due to the fines levied; and under 30s rarely if ever get prison time; older people will get some unpleasant thing like “weekend prison” or “community service” which takes away their weekend but does not prevent them from working during the week and still having the fine to pay off.

I thought the US inspired drugs war predated Nixon (albeit by only a few years) but having never grown up in the USA I have no idea what damage he may well have inflicted on his own country.

When I grew up European culture had not been as diluted by USA influence (we got cartoons and movies but they weren’t viewed as “reality”) – and our near neighbours in the UK were still recovering from WW II. The UK seemed to only stop fighting WW II (at least in the minds of its middle classes and leaders) around 1988.

Earlier this morning I searched for any new reports on all the drugs forums about MPA; a relatively commonly used functional stimulant that until now had not been explicitly judged by the health or criminal justice authorities of the UK as especially dangerous or problematic.

That doesn’t surprise me as its chemical composition is such that excessive use results in various distinctly unpleasant (but not normally fatal or permanent) physical illnessses as well as being hard on the mental health (its still less harmful than the cathinones). The chemical is rarely used on its own by younger people but does find its way into branded blends sold as “MDMA type” substances. It is used by older generations for the same reasons as any other amfetamine type stimulant.

I was dismayed to find more than one “bad trip report” about medical issues (requiring NHS treatment), psychological addictions; even someone ashamedly admitting they had been agrressive to NHS staff without knowing it and the paramedics had required the Police to assist them.

These reports were clearly not from “young boys” (who tend to be shy about admitting things like this) but grown adult men from age 25-40; all with plenty of previous experience of substance use.

There were also a few reports of some serious cardiovascular problems presenting with continued use (the sort of medical nasties that quite rightly should scare a person of my age). There are also claims that NL is flooding the market with a slightly lower quality version of the substance, and unfortunately plenty of evidence that MPA is widely being used by injection (I have a fear of needles which I am TBH grateful for; and the very thought of injecting stuff like this with so much free sulfur makes me wince anyway).

The health authorities monitor these posts to form part of their evidence. They can get NCA/GCHQ to check if statements are true but that is very rarely done (its normally only authorised if the evidence points towards serious crime) – very few adult males are going to make up a horror story about their own drug use which shows them in a bad light anyway and forum moderators tend to remove blatantly false posts or ones that either promote or berate individual vendors.

Unfortunately it only takes a few “horror stories” for regulators to start investigating; in the UK they had to be fair been spending two whole years gathering evidence and investigating other options before deciding (rather reluctantly) on this catch all law which will still take some months to implement.

It is still advisable to reduce your intake over these few months to a point where it won’t matter too much when the supply of these things dries up.