Hansard

I am pleased to take part in the debate, as it is important that we highlight the issue in Parliament. As we know, human beings have always had a propensity for indulging in substances that can change our state of mind to introduce euphoria, hallucination or relaxation. Young people in particular can be tempted by their curiosity to try out new experiences and are often less risk averse than many of the rest of us. Some drugs agency workers have told me that, with substances that are not illegal, there is the added incentive that use or possession of them will not attract a criminal record. Therefore, some people think that the reduction in the use of illegal drugs might be due in part to the increased use of new psychoactive substances.

It is unfortunate that experimentation has become much more dangerous in recent years, due to advances in two areas: chemistry/biochemistry and information technology. When I was a young undergraduate chemistry student, chemists knew that they could mix certain reactants together under particular conditions to produce a pharmaceutical substance, but the exact mechanism through which the reaction took place and how it affected the brain and body and the consequent physiological and psychological effects were not well understood.

Over the past 40 years there has been huge development in knowledge about the mechanisms of chemical reactions, which means that compounds can be tailor made. There is also knowledge about how parts of compounds bind to receptors in the brain, and their effects. That means that whole families of compounds that have particular physiological and psychological effects can be fairly easily produced.

As the minister said, advances in information technology mean that when the substances have been produced they can be sold online to individuals anywhere in the world. Given the use of bitcoins and other alternative forms of payment, it is extremely difficult to control sales.

The exponential development of knowledge therefore makes the control of so-called legal highs very difficult. I very much agree with the minister that the term “legal high” is not in any way helpful and makes substances sound innocuous. People think that something that is legal must be safe. The preferred terminology—new psychoactive substances, or NPS—is far more accurate.

New psychoactive substances have been developed to mimic the effects of illegal drugs. They are marketed in ways that bypass legislation, with no product warnings to consumers about possible side effects as there would be for prescribed medication, and no guarantee of product purity. As the minister said, new psychoactive substances were implicated in the deaths of 47 people in Scotland in 2012 and are thought to have contributed directly in 32 of those cases.

The UK Government has responsibility for banning and classification of illegal drugs and considers drugs on a case-by-case basis. It recently banned the hallucinogenic NBOMe and Benzofury, which are ecstasy-type substances. More than 200 substances have been banned since 2012. However, whenever a substance is banned, a similar substance can be designed and produced to take its place

In December, the Home Office announced that it will undertake a review that could lead to changes in UK legislation. An option that is under investigation is the automatic ban on drugs that are substantially similar in chemical structure to illegal drugs. However, the solution might not be as simple as it sounds, given that some substances that are medically useful might be similar in chemical structure to some illegal drugs. Too strict a definition might constrain research into potentially useful new legal medical drugs. Countries that have adopted such a measure have made exclusions for food, medical and other products. Of course, it is unfortunate that provision for exclusions can create loopholes.

Products are often marketed as something other than new psychoactive substances, such as plant food or bath salts. I understand that the UK Government is looking at legislation in Poland and the Republic of Ireland that attempts to control the internet sale of such products, with regard to their safety and their use as a drug—although how the substance is used ultimately depends on the purchaser rather than the seller.

Whatever legislative proposals come out of the UK review—and none of the suggestions that I mentioned will be easy to implement—education and increasing public awareness will be crucial. A simplistic just-say-no message will not succeed. It has not succeeded in the past and it probably will not succeed with new psychoactive substances.

The purpose of our amendment, which I hope that the Government will accept, is to reinforce the message that anyone who is tempted to indulge in new psychoactive substances needs to be aware of the dangers that are posed by some substances and indeed other substances that might be present, having been produced at the same time.

The term “legal high” is misleading and dangerous. These are not cosy, legitimate products, which make people feel good; they are pharmaceutical compounds that have been deliberately manufactured to bind to receptors in the brain and simulate the effects of illegal drugs. They are as dangerous as those drugs, both psychologically and physically.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime produced an informative report, “The challenge of new psychoactive substances”, which goes into a lot of detail, including chemical structural detail. Despite that detail, the report notes that many of the substances contain unfamiliar molecules and that research on most new psychoactive substances is very limited.