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.

As a synthetic drug, Sky News has revealed the source of the UK’s mephedrone supply linking to laboratories in China. Posing as a potential customer, a reporter has been told by a Shanghai-based company that they have five British customers, two of whom are very big. They were also told that the company are well prepared for the mephedrone ban by already developing 5-6 new legal products whom have, as claimed by the company, been told how to make these by their British customers.

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.