Despite being some time since the issue of mephadrone jumped into the consciousness of those who are not familiar with the drugs scene (or the “legal highs” scene), I am still not aware of any genuine deaths that can be solely attributed to mephadrone. There seems to be a number of deaths where multiple drugs were involved including mephadrone and of course the media scaremongers are blaming that drug for the deaths.
It is also clear that there are a number of health risks associated with mephadrone; so the same as paracetamol then ? Well not quite – there has been no extensive testing of mephadrone to assess the risks associated with it whereas paracetamol has had extensive tests. The risks of paracetamol are well understood and the benefits are deemed to outweigh the disadvantages.
Are the apparent risks of mephadrone and the fact that it has not undergone any proper form of testing enough to justify making mephadrone illegal ? Well perhaps …
But some are saying that it should be illegal because people think that because it is legal, it is safe. I am afraid that argument is more than a little ridiculous – after all rat poison is hardly safe but it is still legal. Personally I think that someone who receives a parcel through the post containing a product labelled as “plant food” and still believes that taking it is safe is more than a little foolish.
But of course the true merits of the argument are ignored when the government makes a knee-jerk reaction to make it illegal – as is due to happen on the 16th April 2010.
Professor David Knutt has made an interesting point that people who choose to use recreational drugs may well be better off using the already illegal amphetamines or ecstasy because the risks of these are known whilst mephadrone is an unknown quantity. Whether we approve or not of the use of recreational drugs, it seems that making the drugs illegal is not going to stop their use.
Indeed it may well be that making such drugs illegal not only pushes people who insist on using into the arms of pushers who adulterate their drugs with other harmful substances, but also pushes people into trying “legal highs” as an alternative. These “legal highs” are obvious less understood than drugs that have been around for some time, and may be more or less harmful than the existing choices.
By continually looking to what drug users are using and making everything they use illegal, we are encouraging the development of new drugs with similar effects. These new drugs may be more or less harmful than the ones made illegal – we just do not know.
It is time we re-considered this failed attempt at prohibition which has been going on since (in the UK and in the case of opiates) just after World War I. There are many arguments against the current position on prohibition, but one argument that is of particular relevance in today’s financial climate is the possible tax revenue that could come from a “sin tax” on recreational drugs. Making drugs legal would very likely reduce their cost sufficiently that a tax could be added and the resulting product would still be cheap enough to undercut the illegal drugs – and of course the government could add a big health warning.