Class D classification lower risk drugs in UK

[Optimass]

Cannabis, Ecstasy and other “low-harm” drugs should be licensed for sale in chemists to lure young people off alcohol and dangerous legal highs, a group of peers and MPs says today.

Such drugs should fall into a new “class D” category that would allow them to be sold legally subject to rules on content, labelling and age restrictions, in a way similar to tobacco and alcohol, according to a report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, which includes former Cabinet ministers from the Conservative and Labour parties.

They say that classification should be carried out by a scientific committee with Bank of England-style independence to keep it free of political meddling. Use of more harmful drugs, such as heroin, should be decriminalised and supplied through government clinics that would focus on treatment, Baroness Meacher, the chairwoman of the group, says.

The plans, the most radical yet suggested for drug reform, follow suggestions last month from the Commons Home Affairs Committee that a royal commission be set up to look at far-reaching changes to the drug laws, including decriminalisation.

Last night the Government said it would consider the proposals. Charities and scientists said the ideas were sensible and deserved a fair hearing.

The report looks at the growing number of legal highs, which are arriving in Britain at the rate of one a week. Baroness Meacher told The Times: “What happened was all these witnesses came along and said when you talk about legal highs, you have to talk about other drugs — because the use of legal highs is a response to the fact that Ecstasy and cannabis, in particular, are bought from drug dealers and they are highly contaminated.”

Britain should follow New Zealand in introducing a category D for those legal highs that can be shown to be relatively harmless, the report argues. Baroness Meacher said it would be “daft” then not to include Ecstasy and lower-strength forms of cannabis in such a category.

“Young people are likely to make good decisions if they have reliable information,” she said. “One of the benefits of well-regulated, low-harm highs is that young people might switch to them from alcohol.” Regulating the content of drugs would protect people from the more harmful forms of cannabis, like skunk, she added.

“It’s terribly important in order to make clear which are the most dangerous and which are the lower-level drugs. If you have a situation, as you do now, where a relatively harmless drug is in category A, we have completely lost the purpose of classification and are misleading the public.”

The report, which took evidence from police officers, scientists and officials, also recommends that the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs, (ACMD) the expert body that guides ministers on drug classification, should be given independence.

Professor David Nutt, sacked as chairman of the ACMD in 2009 for saying Ecstasy was safer than horseriding, said: “Most people know this is the way forward. It just takes someone courageous to say it.”

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/ne ... 656623.ece

Pretty sound thinking in terms of encouraging young people to move away from alcohol and other more harmful drugs. Undoubtedly you still end up with the odd idiot that doesnt take as recommended - but having work in the security industry on and off over the years, the difference between managing peeps so hammered on booze and other twisted to buggery on mdma is huge.

Interesting the points raised around mdma being a low risk drug - its been completely satanised over here.

Columbia looking at legalisation as a means to managing the drug too ...

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/colombia/130129/colombia-considers-legalizing-ecstasy

Another supporting article

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/14/ecstasy-can-be-safe-if-taken-in-its-purest-form-b-c-health-chief-says/

Thoughts and comments? - interesting topic that gets brought up from time to time.

[mr-universe]

90% of all drug laws are to try to protect people from themselves imo

a lot of people are just a bit too stupid to be using drugs and then leads on to addiction and related problems.

i'm sure if everyone was level-headed then making all drugs legal irl wouldn't change much but imo that will never happen

btw am wondering why cannabis isn't legalized yet. easy to obtain illegally and good portion of country already blaze it up. the government should change that drug law asap imo

btw those legal highs are a lot worse than natural cannabis imo. and anyone who smokes that legal incense shit is an idiot imo

[frocko]

I think it's a great idea. Sensible. People are always going to want to use drugs so why not make it safe.

Drug laws here are beyond a joke, what a waste of time and money going after people who smoke weed. People cause far more harm after 10 pints then after smoking. ( I personally don't smoke, can't stand the stuff)

You can't smoke weed but you can buy legal highs containing who knows what and they want to test these on dogs!

http://safe.org.nz/Campaigns/Animal-testing/Latestnews/

I think P here is a problem because people can't get anything else. Sometimes people are going to want to get high, I find that unlikely to change so I think updated sensible laws so be put into place.

Obviously it wont be perfect and some people would abuse MDMA but some people also abuse alcohol.

[Leeroid]

Never gonna happen as no sensible politician with their career on the line is going to support it. It's just giving the opposition easy material to slander you with.

[Daz69]

Never gonna happen as no sensible politician with their career on the line is going to support it. It's just giving the opposition easy material to slander you with.

The situation we've had for the last 40 years is hardly sensible....

[karm015]

Never gonna happen as no sensible politician with their career on the line is going to support it. It's just giving the opposition easy material to slander you with.

not necessarily true. look at what rob borbidge did to help john howard with gun control legislation after the '96 massacre in aus

[Diab0lic]

The war on drugs is one of the biggest fukc ups of all time. Unfortunately the "general public" (oh how I hate them) is convinced that it must go on, and therefore so are almost all politicians. Even when drug laws are relaxed (as in the successful Portuguese model, look it up) and the harm is greatly reduced, politicians in other countries are too scared to follow. A few always speak up but not much happens.

Prohibition DOES NOT WORK

And MDMA is a low harm drug. There is little legit evidence of short or long term harm. The oft-quoted research that showed it destroys neurons was later shown to have actually used methamphetamine. It gets a bad rap here mainly due to ignorance and the fact that there are a lot of more harmful alternatives being thrown around as "ecstasy". Anything in a pill here is "ecstasy", just like all that filth the legal high shops sell that you smoke is called synthetic "cannabis".

Possession of small amounts of drugs should not be a criminal issue. Period. It needs to be an education and health issue. Anyone who disagrees is poorly informed, on some kind of crusade or has a vested interest in opposing it