Drugs adviser issues tough warning on 'legal highs'

You or I can go to Camden High Street and buy a pack of plant food and be told how to feed your plants. This is pure nonsense, Alice in Wonderland stuff, but it is happening.

He added: At last count there are some 200 different psychoactive chemicals that lie outside the existing scope of our regulations.

We cant possibly address all the classes of compounds of drugs at once unless we can think of cleverer ways of regulating.

The ACMD is a panel of 23 scientists and other experts who analyse the risks associated with drugs and recommend to the Home Office whether they should be banned under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

According to their conclusions, new recreational drugs can be categorised as Class A, B or C substances, which carry differing penalties under the law.

Prof Iversen said the ACMD was particularly concerned about Benzo Fury and a new set of compounds based on lysergic acid, better known as LSD.

The human dose is in micrograms, and so small you cannot weigh it accurately. They are usually presented as a dilute solution soaked into blotting paper. The dangers of overdose are clearly immense, he said, during a public meeting of the ACMD in central London.

This is an area we are looking at with a great deal of caution and worry.

Prof Iversen, a retired Oxford University professor of pharmacology, said potential medicines required extensive tests and trials for potential side effects before they were allowed on the market.

But these drugs can be made in China one week and shipped here for consumption the next week - to me that is an appalling situation, he said.

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Drugs adviser issues tough warning on 'legal highs'