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| Author | Topic: Drugs |
| Mind-altering drugs: does legal mean safe? |
posted 10/7/06 5:35 AM
Mind-altering drugs: does legal mean safe? 29 September 2006 Gaia Vince Lying back, exhaling: usually the last thing a person does before leaving this world. Only in this case it is the world that is leaving me. A few minutes ago I smoked a pipe of Salvia divinorum, a powerful hallucinogenic herb that I bought openly and legally from a shop near my home. Of the £25 I handed over, more than £4 will find its way into government coffers in the form of sales tax. And salvia was just one of dozens of powerful but entirely legal psychoactive substances that I could have chosen. All that was far from my mind as the salvia took me on a consciousness-expanding journey unlike any other I have ever experienced. My body felt disconnected from "me" and objects and people appeared cartoonish, surreal and marvellous. Then, as suddenly as it had began, it was over. The visions vanished and I was back in my bedroom. I spoke to my "sitter" - the friend who was watching over me, as recommended on the packaging - but my mouth was awkward and clumsy. When I attempted to stand my coordination was off. Within a couple of minutes, however, I was fine and clear-headed, though dripping with sweat. The whole experience had lasted less than 5 minutes. My salvia trip was part of a journey into the world of "legal highs", a new generation of powerful mind-altering substances that are growing in popularity across the world (see Table). Accurate figures are hard to come by, as these substances are rarely monitored by drug-enforcement agencies. But the proliferation of online and high-street retailers suggest they are an increasingly lucrative business, and one company specialising in legal drugs recently reported an annual turnover of $16 million. The reasons for their rising popularity are not hard to fathom. Not only are they legal and openly available in many countries, they work. Whether or not they are a good thing, however, is more difficult to decide. Supporters argue that legal highs are a bit of fun with a social conscience - a harm-reduction measure that allows people to experiment safely with psychoactive substances while separating drug use from criminality. Others say no one should be allowed to take such powerful drugs: the risks are too great. Some of the disagreement is down to the dearth of information about the short and long-term health effects of most of these substances, their potential for abuse and their addictiveness. But legal highs are also a battleground between those who see the use of mind-altering drugs as a human right and those who think it is plain wrong. Faced with growing use and an information vacuum, governments are playing catch-up. Some, notably the US and Australia, are clamping down on each new substance as soon as they encounter it. Some are doing nothing. Others are commissioning research into the drugs and their effects before deciding what action to take. And this is just the beginning. With hundreds of synthetic drugs on their way, not to mention traditional herbs that are being introduced to western consumers for the first time, some believe that cheap, easily available, legal highs could render the street drugs market redundant. So what do we know - and not know - about legal drugs? Legal highs are nothing new. Paul Anand, manager of Shiva, the shop in Greenwich, London, where I bought my salvia, has been selling them for 15 years, starting with a stall at the Glastonbury festival. "Back then, I was selling guarana, damiana and wild lettuce," he says, "basically poor imitators of cannabis." There was a small market for the stuff, but among experienced drug users they were regarded as a joke, with few discernable effects. That all changed with the arrival of new, reliable and effective substances, beginning in the UK at least with magic mushrooms. At the end of the 1990s, vendors started taking advantage of a legal loophole that permitted the sale of fresh mushrooms as long as they were not prepared in any way. Business boomed. In the year to April 2004 the number of shops selling magic mushrooms in England and Wales rose from a handful to over 400, according to the British Crime Survey. In the same period 260,000 people bought mushrooms - an increase of 40 per cent on the previous 12 months. In July 2005, the government closed the loophole, outlawing the sale of fresh mushrooms containing the hallucinogens psilocybin and psilocin, but by then it was too late. The demand for legal highs had been established, and high street and internet vendors rushed to fill the void with an assortment of alternatives. These include another type of magic mushroom, the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), which does not contain psilocybin or psilocin but is packed with other hallucinogens including muscimol. Salvia is another. And then there is an astonishing assortment of psychoactive herbs, pills and potions designed to mimic the effect of pretty much every illegal drug going. No dodgy dealers more... From issue 2571 of New Scientist magazine, 29 September 2006, page 40-45 http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19125711.000 |
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