So is the ACMD advice to the Government to classify mephedrone as a Class B drug premature and unfounded upon lack of scientific evidence?  Critics have said that the advice subjected was to please ministers or the mood of the day’s press in that the suspected mephedrone-related deaths have not been confirmed.

Some say that a ban will hand the market to criminal gangs pushing the prices up and the purity down.

Roger Howard, UK Drug Policy Commission, has said that “we need to avoid hasty overreacting to very…genuine public and political concerns” and that advice should be based on science and evidence.

Tom Lloyd, International Drug Policy Consortium, claims that this ban would be “ineffective, very costly and counter-productive”. He suggests that ‘grown up education’ is required where one must look at the reasons for people taking the drug rather than a straight ban.