NO LAW WILL STOP PEOPLE WANTING TO GET HIGH

Selling Small Amounts of Drugs in Clubs Is Not Shocking. It's A
Responsible Idea

Last autumn, in the throbbing vaults of a mainstream Manchester
nightclub, surrounded by a horde of happy, normal, affluent young
people heavily intoxicated by recreational drugs, I saw for myself
how pointless the current moral panic over mephedrone is.

The woman who took me there, Fiona Measham, a criminologist from
Lancaster University, allowed the scene to speak for itself. Her
research, the first of its kind, indicates that two thirds of British
clubbers -- ie, tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens
- -- are routinely taking cocaine, Ecstasy and amphetamines at weekends
before going back to work on Monday morning. Dr Measham, who is also
member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), found
that 98 per cent of clubbers had used drugs at some point.

This leads one to the inescapable conclusion that drug-induced
dancing and socialising is a significant part of modern culture --
and of the UKP30 billion night-time economy. And the inevitable
follow-up question is: how on earth does one begin to ban that?

Mephedrone is being made illegal, like Ecstasy, GHB, GBL and ketamine
before it. The Home Secretary says so; the Tories say so; anxious
parents want it so. But the non-drug-taking classes should realise
that the comfort they gain from such legislation will be largely for
their own benefit; and is irrelevant to the hordes of people who will
continue to get high regardless.

The reality is that we can, with the best of intentions, ban
mephedrone, and with it the whole family of cathinones; we can ban
the entire generation of derivatives that will surely follow from
China; or indeed the generation after that. But nothing we do will
alter the central, inescapable fact that people take drugs because
they enjoy them.

Quite simply, large swaths of the young -- and often the not-so-young
- -- have an irresistible desire to get out of their heads on a Friday
night. Be it right or wrong, that's a fact of life. The American
pharmacologist Ronald Siegel has described intoxication as the fourth
strongest irrepressible human desire after food, sleep and sex, and
few would challenge him -- particularly on the miserable evidence of
our relationship with that other well-known legal high, alcohol.
(Interestingly, ACMD this week called for a ban on drinking games at
university -- potentially more deadly and destructive than any banned
substance -- but one does not expect a race to legislate.) All of
which rather suggests that blanket prohibition of recreational drugs
is destined to be a disaster, or at the very least an endless waltz
between legislators and those who tweak chemical compounds for
criminal gain. According to Measham, the debate needs to become much
more sophisticated but also more realistic. Because of the sheer
numbers of people involved and their desires, and because of the
power of the internet, not to mention the ingenuity of chemists in
China designing the next legal high, we have to be a lot more nuanced
in our responses.

Her latest research from Lancaster University, published this month,
shows that stricter security at ports and airports, together with
recent drug seizures, have steered drug users towards more readily
available legal highs, such as mephedrone, because of the reduced
availablity and purity of Ecstasy and cocaine. Lack of supply
doesn't, one notes, curb anyone's desire to get high.

The "perversity of prohibition", Measham found, is that reduction in
supply results in drug users turning to unfamiliar and
under-researched chemicals -- perhaps more dangerous than the last one.

So what are the sensible options? One is honest information -- give
people a few hard facts about the dangers of drugs such as
mephedrone, rather than rumour, misinformation and waffle about bans.
The criminalisation of intoxication is happening without accompanying
help for users, largely because such people do not present a problem
to society. But the provison of accurate, non-judgmental, harm-
reduction information for recreational drug use is as vital as it is
lacking. Arm young people with the facts, and they are at least
better equipped to decide about risks for themselves.

Another creative option is to criminalise the act of supplying
intoxicating substances, rather than the possession of the substances
themselves. But while this might prevent the weary process of banning
one drug and waiting for another to take its place, it would not
address the fact that people will continue to seek to intoxicate
themselves for a good night out.

Professor David Nutt, the former head of the ACMD sacked by the
Government for not giving the official line on the dangers of drugs,
suggested yesterday that a new approach might be the sale of small
amounts of drugs like mephedrone and Ecstasy in controlled
environments, such as clubs.

For those who prefer to keep their heads firmly in the sand, this is
a shocking idea. But after an evening observing youngsters indulging
in mass "illegal" intoxication -- with the tacit acceptance of club
owners, police and, by extension, society itself -- to me it seems an
honest, logical and responsible thing to do.