Amnestys are being given out on mephedrone in that users could hand in the recently banned substance to any police station in order to avoid prosecution.  Humberside Police had given amnesty up to Friday midnight where no details would be taken.   Det Ch Insp Gerry Darling said: “By holding the amnesty we are recognising that until now people may have been using the substance within the law for some time.  However, it is now no longer legal and so we are allowing them the chance to get rid of it without the risk of prosecution.”

The parliamentary process for banning mephedrone and other cathinone derivatives in the UK has now completed with its illegal status as a Class B drug as of 16 April.

Ex-adviser of the Advisory Council of the Misuse of Drugs speaks out and writes in the Guardian-The Observer on her reasons for her resignation. Despite Polly Taylor’s sadness in leaving the organisation in which she commends the members as hard working and experienced, she criticises the Council for announcing their decision on mephedrone to the Home Secretary when in fact their report was still being considered by the group.

Taylor admits that her reasons for leaving were based on the recently published Principles for the Treatment of Scientific Advice where it allows for advisers to be fired on the grounds that a minister has made the decision that they are undermining trust. She states that ‘expert value is without value unless it is truly independent. It should not be given to ensure the trust of politicians or to fit the mood of the day’s press’.

So this is what ex-Chair of the ACMD, Prof Nutt, has to say about the Home Secretary’s announcement to ban mephedrone:

-       The Government’s decision was a “knee-jerk” reaction to respond to media and public hysteria;

-       The Government should have waited until the anticipated report from The European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, due out in July;

-       He finds it “difficult to support criminalisation of people who are using drugs which are less dangerous than alcohol”;

-       A new approach needs to be taken to evaluate synthetic drugs;

-       Hopes that careful assessments are carried out of the consequences of the ban.

Already a new ‘legal drug’ is on its way to the UK as a replacement for recently banned mephedrone and will present legislators with another headache.  Sold online under the name of NRG-1, it is said to have far worse effects than the illegal drugs cocaine and ecstasy.  No doubt this will set the debate going again as to how new legal synthetic drugs should be dealt with, despite the ban of previous substances. The ‘designer’ drugs market is now said to be worth millions of pounds a year.