5th graders selling 'happy crack' at school.

At first glance this clip seems like something from Onion News Network, or The Day Today , but no, this really is a KCTV news item about kids 'as young as five' selling sugar and Kool-Aid powder in 'plastic bags' and calling it 'happy crack' (Kool-Aid, the popular US powdered fruit drink, it turns out was called 'fruit smack' in its previous syrupy incarnation).

Make of the clip what you will; worrying sign of the times and harbinger of an epidemic of child sugar snorting (send in the Black Hawks!), or media-hype drug-panic news-filler based on one kid who stayed up past bed time the previous night copying something he saw of CSI.

Either way, BE AFRAID.

Cannabis making politicians go all weird. Again.

Just what is it about cannabis that makes certain politicians act so bizarrely and disconnect from reality is such spectacular fashion? And this is without even smoking it (although actually, most of them have). Moreover, there appears to be a sort of dose-response effect in evidence: The more senior they get, the more deranged they seem to become. Look at how Cameron has metamorphosed from a pragmatic backbencher and member of the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2001 calling for cannabis to be reclassified from B to C, into a classic reactionary-right drug warrior, now as party leader, calling for it to be moved back from C to B. And see how Gordon Brown, who never made a peep about drug policy before becoming PM, is now grabbing any opportunity to wheel out his new tough line advocating mass criminalisation of young cannabis users (no child left behind) as a way of asserting his prime-ministerial strength and moral fortitude. Rational thought, it appears, is the first casualty of a drug war.

As anyone who has been following the seemingly endless (we are now in year 7) cannabis reclassification shenanigans knows, last week Gordon Brown strongly implied that he planned to reclassify cannabis from C back to B regardless of what the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommends at the end of this month (but with all the serious money, and BBC leaks, on them calling for it to stay in C). In case you don’t know the ACMD are the 30 or so Government appointed scientists and experts from the drugs field who have recently completed their marathon 4-day literature review and public consultation on the B/C question.

Brown’s position on this question was echoed by another recent example of how politics and emotive anecdote are trumping rationality, pragmatism and science; a Daily Telegraph op-ed last week with the willfully ignorant headline (seeming to almost revel in the idea of bad science led policy making):

‘Ignore the experts and reclassify cannabis’.

This veritable beacon of endarkenment thinking comes from Debra Bell, whose ‘Talking About Cannabis’ website and campaign (built around her experiences of her son’s cannabis problems) is the perfect example of precisely why science based policy decisions should be made by committees of experts and not distraught parents. Whilst Debra and other parents or carers who have been through similar personal tragedies deserve our sympathy and should of course be heard (and to give the Council credit, Debra was amongst those invited to present to the hearings in March), policy decisions, such as drug classification, that are very specifically based on science based literature reviews and objective harm rankings, should be left to the scientists.

poster from a from a previous generation's cannabis panic, US 1938.

The classification system is – as Transform have long argued - horribly flawed, outdated, and ineffective, but when it comes to the science based harm rankings that at least nominaly constitute the basis of the ABC system, that is, for better or worse, what the ACMD do. In fact it’s almost the only thing they have time for, not least because they have to do virtually the same cannabis review of the virtually the same literature (and, surprise surprise, come to virtually the same conclusions) every couple of years, just to satisfy the tabloid driven political whims of successive political leaders.

As the blog has already highlighted, it is bizarre, not to mention intellectually offensive, to ask a panel of your own appointed experts to review a body of evidence and make recommendations (at considerable tax-payers expense – how many tens of thousands did the recent review cost?) only to declare you will overrule their decision if it doesn’t go your way before its even published. Brown’s almost Mugabe-like denial of evidence could not be clearer. Ignoring or overuling the Council's finding would be one thing, but incredibly Brown was proudly making his intentions clear before the ACMD had even begun their deliberations, let alone report back to him, on the expensive and time consuming review that he ordered be undertaken.

Evan Harris, a Lib Dem MP and consistent exponent of science and evidence based policy making (he sat on the Science and Technology Committee that produced 2006’s report on the classification system), made this point loud and clear during a debate on classification on last week’s BBC Radio 4 show ‘Any Questions’:

“to ask the experts to do the work and say in advance that you are not going to accept their view is I think corrupting the whole idea of whether you are going to have proper evidence based policy and what matters in drugs policy is what works to help to protect the health of people and we know that education works not gesture politics by politicians thinking that the classification of a drug is a sign of machismo, it isn’t, it is a failed policy the one that Gordon Brown wants to pursue and the experts will tell him that.” (Applause)

Harris also notes that:

"education does work and what we do know that criminalizing young people, forcing it underground and giving criminals the ability to make money in the black economy is not the way to tackle the problem. In Holland where they did decriminalize they had much lower domestic use of cannabis than we have here where we have criminalized so I am interested in what works"

You can listen to the show here - Or read the transcript of it here (the debate continues in Any Answers – also available on BBC listen again)

Helen Mary Jones, Plaid Cymru’s Health spokesperson, also on the show, went as far as to say that it is:

‘very dangerous for politicians to ignore expert advice when they have asked for it’.

It is notable that if Brown does overrule the ACMD’s decision, having specifically requested their opinion it will be a first in the Council’s 37 year history.

In a debate in the House of Commons last week, similar points were put to the drugs minister, most pertinently by Transform supporter Paul Flynn MP who said that drug policy:

‘has been an evidence-free zone that is rich in prejudice, ignorance and denial’.

He was backed up by Tom Brake MP who made the point that:

‘we need to ensure that our decisions are based on evidence and science if we are serious about tackling… drugs’.

Much of the current hysteria regarding cannabis at present revolves around the increasing market prevalence of more potent cannabis, mostly indoor grown varieties that the media and political discourse now blanket terms ‘skunk’ (as if it is somehow an entirely different drug or plant to ‘cannabis’). In a letter to the Times Newspaper, Francis Wilkinson, former Chief Constable of Gwent (and a Transform patron), made the point that it is the economics of a completely unregulated market that fuel the emergence of the stronger forms of any drug.

‘More powerful strains of cannabis (skunk) have been developed as a direct result of it being illegal. More powerful means similar quantities for the same effect: more profit for the same weight. This trend towards illegal drugs becoming more powerful is universal: coca leaves chewed by the Andean Indians become refined cocaine and then the more dangerous crack; poppy seeds prepared and smoked become refined (but often impure) injectable heroin. The engine of these developments is the international drug trade’s desire for greater profits.’

This very point was prominently put to the ACMD cannabis reclassification hearings (in writing and in the oral presentation on the day) by Transform’s Steve Rolles, (as well as being raised by him on the BBC's Today program last week).

This is the final tragic irony of Brown’s emerging expertaphobia; The ‘skunk’ problem he proclaims to be seeking to address has actually been largely created by the very enforcement-led solution he now wants to intensify.

Drug-panic spoof on South Park

cheesing. beware.







Discussion of drug policy in South Park at Stop the Drug War blog

Smoking stuff bad for lungs shock

When the endlessly tedious cannabis classification debate makes one of its biannual return visits to the political landscape the media can't seem to help themselves but scout around for 'cannabis bad for you' stories. This is not to say cannabis isn't bad for you, obviously it can be, as can all drugs, but it does tend to create the impression of a flood of new research proving just how awful cannabis is (when actually it's just a flood of media coverage), just at the moment when the Government are supposed to be reviewing just how awful cannabis is and making policy decisions accordingly. Given the Government's predilection for knee jerk responses to media panics, this isn't an especially useful phenomenon for fans of rational evidence-based policy.

With the UK in the throws of the latest cyclical bout of reefer madness, lazy journalists have been busily typing 'cannabis' into their pubmed search engines and seeing what turns up that can possibly be turned into a 'cannabis really bad for you' headline. These usually take the form of either cannabis drives you mad, or cannabis is 5 time more carcinogenic than tobacco, with more recent variations about the 'new' super-potent 'skunk cannabis' that is *insert number between 10 and 50* times more potent than the old stuff from the 60s. There's various discussions about this elsewhere on the blog (search for 'cannabis' in the little box at the top of the page)

The BBC have jumped on the bandwagon with a report on their health website today titled 'warning over cannabis lung harm' highlighting two new studies that, unsuprsingly perhaps, link smoking cannabis with lung harm. As it goes the report is better than many, not least because they were good enough to include a quote from me attempting to put some of the more shock-horror conclusions into context. The piece is also distinguished by featuring the worlds worst ever cannabis picture, surely staged with some Wood Lane grass cuttings and an old bird's nest?

a birds nest, yesterday

More seriously, I was pleased to successfully slip in the issue of smoking harm reduction. Its something that almost never gets mentioned in the cannabis lung damage discussions; of course smoking cannabis is bad for your lungs, so don't smoke it. If you are going to consume cannabis you can dramatically reduce lung damage using a vaporiser or eliminate the risk entirely by eating it in a some form of cooked preparation.

I can count the number of times this obvious bit of harm reduction advice has featured in a 'cannabis smoking bad for lungs shock' story on one hand. Actually one finger, but its a start.


further reading:

This blog offers some useful critique of the New Zealand study covered in the BBC report

Drugscope debunks misleading Telegraph canna-panic stats

An excellent piece of debunking of some canna-panic silliness in the Telegraph from Drugscope is reproduced below. Such sensationalist and misleading media coverage does nothing to further the debate on sensible responses to the health harm associated with cannabis use and only serves to encourage counterproductive knee-jerk Government enforcement responses, whilst providing a shock headline to help shift units. Very disappointing from the Telegraph which has in the past been quite pragmatic and progressive on the cannabis issue. Ho Hum.

-------------------------

On Friday 11 January the Daily Telegraph published a front-page news article under the headline: Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital.

The Daily Telegraph piece referred to National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) figures cited by Minister of State for Public Health, Dawn Primarolo, in a response to a Parliamentary Question about the numbers of people treated for cannabis.

DrugScope sent a letter on Friday 11 January to the Daily Telegraph in response to this story; as yet they have declined to publish it. Our response is reproduced below.

Dear Sir,

The front-page headline on Friday’s Daily Telegraph (Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital, 11/01/08) misrepresents figures given by Dawn Primarolo, Minister of State for Public Health, in her response to a Parliamentary Question this week.

We have ascertained that the figures supplied by the Minister do not relate to actual hospital admissions; the source of the figures, the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) does not collect data on hospital admissions and this was evident in the Minister’s response.

The figures instead relate to those who have come forward to community-based drug treatment services seeking some form of help, advice or treatment relating to their use of cannabis. DrugScope understands that even if ‘treatment’ consists of no more than an informal chat with a drug worker, this would still have been recorded in the statistics quoted by the Minister.

Some of those clients may of course have gone on to receive treatment in hospital for conditions relating to their use of cannabis. However, figures provided to DrugScope by the Department of Health reveal that rather than 500 hospital admissions a week, the figure was nearer 14 per week (in 2006/07) for individuals with a primary diagnosis of mental health problems due to the use of cannabis. This is 14 admissions too many, but still way below the figure quoted by your correspondent.

In addition, the number of hospital admissions in 2006/07 with this diagnosis (750) was lower than in 2005/06 (946) - and it should be noted that the same individual could have been admitted to hospital more than once in any one year.

The public do need to be aware of the potential risks related to cannabis; it is not a harmless drug. But public information about the drug must be based on sound data and where that data exists, the media has a responsibility to be scrupulous in its presentation.

Yours,

Martin Barnes

Chief executive,
DrugScope SE1

Police remain calm during meth panic

Methamphetamine, a drug that has caused substantial problems in many countries, notably the US, Canada and much of SE Asia, has yet to have the same impact in the UK. Indeed Alan Travis reports in the Guardian, that according to the police, the epidemic has yet to arrive on these shores to any significant degree.

His column thankfully doesn’t contain the more familiar emotive assertions and scare stories that we have witnessed from many other journalists over the past few months as the meth panic has been gathering pace. As with so many previous drug panics, the hype surrounding methamphetamine isn’t helpful at coming up with sensible policy responses. It tends to distort reality and push policy makers towards populist tough measures regardless of the consequences or evidence of effectiveness. See here for a Transform ‘how to…’ of creating a drug panic.

The meth panic has all the characteristics of previous drug panics, from crack in the late 90s, PCP and cocaine in the 80s, and going back further, cannabis in the 40s and 50s and alcohol during the height of the temperance movement. Much of the same language is used, typically deploying stories of crazed addicts, imbued with superhuman strength (grannies throwing police out of windows etc) immune to bullets, on sexual or violent rampages and so on – Even though such tales in no way describe the vast majority of using behaviours, it makes a good story, as lazy journalists and politicians have discovered.

This particular panic has resulted in political activity ranging from a high profile but almost certainly pointless reclassification, to the consideration of banning Lemsip. Whilst debate and action on the meth issue is welcome (the fact it hasn' t happened yet doesn't mean it wont at some stage, a lesson we learnt with crack), the epidemics in the US and Canada unfolded despite a schedule 1 classification and all manner of tough talk, rather demonstrating the irrelevance of such enforcement-led responses. Such political posturing ends up providing a smokescreen for more important problems – such as why we have drug epidemics in the first place, how to deal with the root causes of such problems and how to prevent them, and what are the appropriate public health responses for problem users.

ACPO suggest that methamphetamine is not yet a problem in the UK because of the increasingly cheap and available supply of cocaine. The low number of crystal meth users in the UK is more likely because demand for stimulants more generally is met by the existing and well established amphetamine market. Needless to say decades of enforcement have demonstably failed to have any meaningful impact on the price and availability of either cocaine or amphetamines. There is therefore to believe an enforcement response to meth, if and when it does arrive, would be any more successful.

Now its cannabis and gay incest

Here's one we haven't seen before. Throughout the long history of reefer madness this one has to be the weirdest yet. A new short for MTV Canada, reported in the Toronto star attempts to dissuade young people from driving stoned. Itself a perfectly laudable goal, but the new ad's approach is to present an every day cautionary tale suggesting that your judgment after smoking a bong will be so compromised you will engage in a homoerotic kiss with your same sex sibling. And if you're so wasted you're snogging your brother, well obviously you really shouldn't be driving.

watch it here

You'd be forgiven for asking what the hell this is about. I feel fairly certain that a search of Pubmed will show no papers linking cannabis and gay incest. No - this is a classic attempt at the modern art of viral Internet marketing. In terms of exposure, it clearly works - I'm blogging it, your reading about it and probably watching it, some of you will tell others about it, and on it goes. The film makers, none other than uber-agency Satchi and Satchi, are not a stupid bunch. They've thought this through; they know you can massively magnify an ad's exposure by including enough controversy or shock value to ensure the ad itself becomes the story. So far, so cynical.

But, you have to ask - will the ad, either in its original TV slot or in its Internet afterlife, achieve anything more than lots of viral exposure. The so-clever-it-hurts Satchi execs clearly know all about exposure, but do they know how to reduce the level of driving under the influence? Do they measure outcomes? Do they care? Anti-drink driving campaigns have been highly effective in the past, so its not as if the film makers had nothing to base this pathetic effort on.

The obvious problem with the film is that it's completely ridiculous, and fails so spectacularly to chime with reality or the experiences of its target audience that the possibility then exists of its safe driving message actually being undermined. 'Kids' don't like being patronised, and we have long and rather tragic history of failed anti-drug campaigns devised by 'grown-ups' to prove it.

The anatomy of a drug panic

On Friday the Guardian ran a news article that came perilously close to the classic ‘new killer drug’ panic stories we are more used to seeing in the tabloids. It’s a hackneyed old journalist trick when reporting drug stories that risk bening a bit dull or are maybe too complicated for an 800 worder. The basic things to remember to do are:

• Pre-decide your narrative arc: e.g. deadly new drug must be banned
• (rotten) Cherry-pick all the worst sounding, most scarey bits of information from the source material
• Especially look for facts that involve suffering, rape, and death (preferably of teenaged girls)
• Ignore context, more positive/ambiguous harm assessments, and key facts if they don’t suit the drama of your ‘new killer drug’ story
• Come up with a suitably high impact headline, preferably including one of the following ‘crazed’, ‘rapist’ , ‘kill’ or ‘death’
• Try and mention that the drug can be bought...ON THE INTERNET!!

Here are some highlights for the Guardian piece in bold, with commentary. And theres some discussion afterwards.

Warning on legal dance drug that experts say can kill

· Health Loophole in law allows BZP to be sold as 'fertiliser'
· Report urges EU to consider imposing ban

Rupert Neate
Friday April 27, 2007
The Guardian

A dance drug described as "legal ecstasy" faces a possible Europe-wide ban after a report catalogued a number of deaths and serious injuries linked to the stimulant.

As we shall see ‘linked to’ in no way translates to ‘caused by’

Two people have died after taking the drug with ecstasy and it has been found during postmortems on two road accident victims in Britain.

Some key details missing here. The EMCDDA source document being cited notes that:

“In both cases BZP was quantified in blood and urine samples, but a number of other psychoactive substances were also found e.g. cannabinoids, cocaine, ephedrine, MDMA, ketamine, amphetamine, diltiazem and ethanol. Therefore, it could be assumed with a high level of certainty that the possible role of BZP in these cases was negligible”

and that

“In New Zealand, it has been argued (Candor Trust – road safety group) that party pills enhance driving and are, in fact, ‘saving lives’ because they provide a legal and safer alternative to controlled stimulants such as methamphetamine.”

Medical experts warn that benzylpiperazine (BZP) can cause convulsions, anxiety, abnormal heart rates, stomach pain and even death through over-stimulation of chemical pathways in the brain.

All drugs can have side potential effects – read the tiny print on that folded up bit paper in any over the counter or presciption medicine (In case of slow news day: list them in a headline for a ready made scare story on your product of choice). Paracetamol for example can kill, and unlike BZP actually has. I could equally unbalancedly have quoted the EMCDDA report saying BZP “is reported to produce arousal, euphoria, wakefulness, improved vigilance and feeling of wellbeing” (presumably the reason why people take it) and then not mentioned the negative/toxic side effects.

It can also be legally imported into Britain from foreign websites, mostly operating from New Zealand, where it is a multimillion-dollar industry and 20% of the population have taken the drug, which is sold under names such as Pep Twisted, Legal E, Nemesis and Euphoria.

DRUGS ON THE INTERNET!!

Reported deaths in New Zealand from scary new killer drug that 20% of population have tried, with approx 8 million doses consumed : zero

If the assessment, which will be released in June, finds the drug to be dangerous it could be banned throughout the European Union. If the drug is not banned by the EU, the Home Office could add BZP to the list of substances controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Its very unclear what is meant by ‘dangerous’ here. All active drugs have risks and all drug are 'dangerous’ to some degree, indeed most 'can kill' if you try hard enough. But not all drugs are banned, most are strictly regulated to manage and minimize the dangers.

[the Lancet paper] describes the case of an 18-year-old who bought tablets from a dealer in a nightclub thinking they were ecstasy or amphetamines. She collapsed after taking five of them and appeared to have a seizure lasting 10 minutes. When she arrived at hospital her pupils were dilated, her heart was racing and her body temperature and blood pressure had plummeted. She was treated in hospital with tranquillisers and within 12 hours had recovered and was discharged.

The single case described in the Lancet is of a teenager who had unknowingly taken BZP, and furthermore had taken a substantial overdose. So technically this was an accidental 'overdose’ resulting from a ‘poisoning’, and in no way characteristic of informed BZP users who are capable, indeed likely, to exhibit rational overdose-avoiding behaviour if appropriate advice on dosage etc is given at point of sale or on the packaging. Note also that 12 hours later she was fine and went home apparently fully alive.

The Lancet also does not use the term ‘plummeted’ with regards blood pressure and body temperature opting for the less dramatic ‘she was apyrexial (35·9°C).’ (normal body temperature is 37) and reporting ‘a blood pressure of 150/51 mm Hg’. Whilst the systolic figure of 51 is low , 150 systolic pressure is technically in the ‘high blood pressure’ category (>140) if I remember my O'level biology correctly.

The paper says that standard medical tests may not pick up BZP, and warns it is potentially life-threatening.

Test don't pick it up because it is a new drug and not tested for yet. The Lancet quotes a 2005 New Zealand study of 80 BZP related emergency room admissions noting that ‘Three patients had potentially life-threatening recurrent seizures’. I took a look at the referenced paper, and it mentions that of the 80 admissions ‘Two displayed airway compromise and metabolic derangements that were potentially fatal.’ In the study the average patient experiencing adverse effects had taken 4.5 pills (a toxic overdose) and the majority were teenagers.

One of the report's authors, John Ramsey, a toxicologist at St George's hospital in London, told the Guardian: "We have no real idea how widespread the use of this drug is, as it is rarely reported. But it is quite clear it should be a controlled drug."

BZP is a controlled drug. As described earlier in the article it is controlled under the medicine act and is now illegal to sell. I assume he isn’t referring to it being ‘controlled’ by gangsters and criminal profiteers as are other drugs ‘controlled’ under the Misuse of Drugs Act’.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs discussed the legal status of BZP in November but no action was taken.

It was a preliminary review to see whether more action was required. They agreed to look at the issue in more detail.

Phil Willis, chairman of the Commons science and technology select committee, said: "BZP gives the government the perfect chance to play new drugs with a straight bat. They should look into the harm they cause and give drug users proper information about the drug. It is then up to the criminal justice system to decide how illegal the drug should be based on criminality."

Despite the rather confusing last sentence, Phil is onto something here. The Government does indeed have the opportunity to choose the regulatory and legal framework for this substance that would minimize its potential harms. Unmentioned in the article is the fact that in new Zealand the Government established a new class D (appended to the UK-like A,B,C system) that allowed the drug to be sold under licensed conditions including:

- Where the drug can be sold (e.g. not near schools)
- Age of purchaser controls
- In what doses, strengths and quantities it can be sold (based on a risk assessment)
- How the product must be packaged
- How the product must be stored, and how much can be stored in each location What
- Information must be given to the customer at the point of sale (including information about possible interactions with other drugs and medication)

Interesting information that might have been useful for Guardian readers

The European report lists a series of deaths and serious injuries linked to the drug, including a 23-year-old Swiss woman who took BZP together with ecstasy and drank more than 10 litres of water. She died of hyponatraemia, or water poisoning.

So again 'linked', not 'caused by'. The best (worst) example the author can find is clearly a water toxicity death, not a toxic BZP death. The most thorough review of the drug has was produced by the New Zealand Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs (the equivalent of our ACMD), which goes unmentioned in the Guardian coverage. Commenting on this particular death the EACD notes that: “No linkage with the BZP was made and the death displayed all the characteristics of an ecstasy related death” adding that “Other than this one case, no other fatalities are known of, therefore BZP's known potential to cause death is low , or as yet unknown”

Originally designed as a cattle wormer, the drug is considered so dangerous by US authorities that it is classified as schedule one, the same category as heroin.

Schedule 1 is also the same catagory as - less scary drug - cannabis, indeed the US sheduling system is arguably even more riven with anomalies and bad science than our own. According to the EACD review, the DEA decision to put BZP in schedule 1 was in part based on the same water toxicity death, mentioned above, (the one with which ‘no linkage with the BZP was made’).

It should also be noted that the DEA scheduling decision was based on an error in assessing the drugs potency (overestimating it by 20,000%): The DEA initially claimed that:

“BZP acts as a stimulant in humans and produces euphoria and cardiovascular changes including increases in heart rate and systolic blood pressure. BZP is about 20 times more potent than amphetamine in producing these effects. However, in subjects with a history of amphetamine dependence , BZP was found to be about 10 times more potent than amphetamine. ” [ref]

The DEA then produced a revised BZP profile in 2004 stating:

“BZP acts as a stimulant in humans and produces euphoria and cardiovascular effects, namely increases in heart rate and systolic blood pressure. BZP is about 10 to 20 times less potent than amphetamine in producing these effects .”^[ref]

The EMCDDA report also notes that BZP is one tenth the potency of amphetamines. Again unmentioned in the Guardian story.

The report also gives anecdotal evidence that BZP was used in an alleged drug-induced rape case in Britain.

A single piece of scary but unsubstantiated annecdata. The EMCDDA report says the following:

“there has been an alleged drug facilitated sexual assault case in which BZP and 1-(4-methoxyphenyl) piperazine (pMeOPP) were detected in a urine sample. The concerned individual declared to have taken pills called ‘PEP Love’”……. And that “No further details about the case are available.”

So it was an unspecified and alleged ‘sexual assault’, not specified as a ‘rape’, and the wording suggests the user took the pills voluntarily, and there are no further details, about the nature of the assault, whether charges were brought, or whether other drugs (including alcohol) might have been involved.

The authors of the report are concerned that many of the injuries caused by the stimulant may go unreported because it is not routinely tested for and clubbers are unlikely to tell doctors they have taken it.

This is a problem for all illegal or quasi-legal drugs

But despite several raids by the agency and police, including the seizure of 64,900 tablets from a car in London, online shops are still selling thousands of pills a day.

DRUGS ON THE INTERNET!! (refrain)

Finally this quote from a user at the end:

"But I would imagine the legal status and its availability is the main reason people take it."

Morphs into this more dramatic, almost viz-like, pull quote,

'Its legal status is a big reason for people taking it'

helping to back up what the author's apparently pre-decided narrative: this is a killer drug which should be banned.

Just to be clear about this. BZP use has risks, and given its relative newness on the party scene these risks are relatively poorly understood. However, there have been a number of published studies, and governmental reviews that describe what is known thus far. Almost any drug can kill if misused, but BZP, whilst being linked to a number of deaths, does not appear to be linked by way of direct toxic fatality – even following overdose – to any of them. It is evidently possible, but hasn't happened yet. Drug death stats are a minefield at the best of times, but given that BZP has been consumed by significant numbers of people (probably millions) over a number of years, this would suggest to me that compared to similarly placed drugs including ecstasy and amphetamines, it may be at least comparatively less risky.

From a harm minimisation perspective this raises important issues. If people are substituting BZP use for more dangerous illegal drugs, the net effect may be reduced harm (including the harm of a drug conviction). The fact that BZP appears to be fairly dose specific - with unpleasant side effects kicking in at a level only marginally higher than the active dose, (according to the EACD report; at 2.5 times the average dose) as well as following attempts to re-dose as effects ware off - may actually have a self limiting effect on use of the drug: it doesn’t appear to lend itself to patterns of binge use or problematic dependent use. If users are educated about the dangers and have clear safety and dose information available at point of sale or on the packaging potential harms can be reduced further.

Journalists find justification (and a self-congratulatory follow up story) when ‘clampdowns’ are announced in the wake of a decent media drug panic. But if the drug is brought within the Misuse of Drugs Act as this piece seems to be suggesting users may either return to potentially more dangerous drugs, or be buying BZP of unknown strength and purity with no safety information from a harm maximising illegal marketplace. Overdosing teenagers turning up in emergency rooms would seem more likely in this scenario. Bad reporting of drug stories can end up harming people by politicising descisions and making rational evidence-based public health interventions more difficult and less likely.

There are other options of-course. Whilst unregulated sales of the past are clearly unacceptable, the drug could be strictly regulated for sale from licensed vendors, with age of purchaser controls, in plain packaging, with appropriate safety information and warnings, and in units of known dosage – enabling users to make informed decisions and minimise risks. Something like this has, as mentioned, been tried in New Zealand with the class D idea. Maybe the Guardian should be covering that too – and its not like they are unaware of it. The author of this piece contacted me a couple of weeks ago, we had a long chat about all the points raised above, and he had read Transform’s briefing on piperzines produced last year, which discusses all this in detail. Unfortunately, the only detail he uses is in the Guardian online blog item on the same story where he references a scary stat about DRUGS ON THE INTERNET!! from the briefing.

I rate the Guardian. People take it seriously and much of the misinformation in this news piece will probably be cropping up in future coverage - (just watch out for more ridiculous references to date rape, car accidents, death, 'worming tablets' and 'fertiliser').

For the Guardian this was all very.....dissapointing.