Word: britain
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Britain, anyone looking to get high without the criminal side effects can go online or walk into a head shop and buy perfectly legal alternatives to a whole host of illegal drugs, from marijuana to ecstasy to cocaine. But not for long. On Tuesday, Aug. 25, the U.K. government announced it is set to ban these so-called legal highs by the end of the year. The ban on designer drugs such as stimulant BZP, narcotic alternative gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) and cannabis imitator Spice is being described as a precautionary measure, with the aim of getting the substances...
...With this new legislation, Britain joins the growing number of European countries that have tackled legal highs over the past several years. For now, dozens of U.K.-based websites and shops are still free to market and sell alternatives to illegal drugs and to ship them to any country that doesn't yet prohibit them. It's these legal drug dealers that the British ban seeks to target. "The priority will be to chase suppliers rather than users," says Martin Barnes, head of Drugscope, a nonprofit that studies drug use in the U.K., and a member of the advisory board...
...Britain's war on legal highs started in May with talk of a ban on Spice. The Chinese smoking blend is generally described as herbal, but tests carried out in German labs have shown that its herbal mix is sprayed with designer chemicals that mimic the effects of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, but to a more potent effect. France, Germany and Austria have recently outlawed the sale of Spice, and the U.K. now plans to ban not just that specific cannabis substitute but all synthetic cannabinoids - a class of designer drugs structurally resembling cannabis - hoping to nip offshoots...
...drugs faster than lawmakers can prohibit them. An example of this seemingly endless cycle is the ban on BZP, a stimulant also known as 1-benzylpiperazine. The E.U. announced last year that all member states should ban BZP by March 2009 (lagging five years behind the U.S.). Like Britain, several other E.U. states still haven't complied, but already BZP "alternatives" are being advertised all over legal-high-vendor websites. It's unknown what exactly is in these BZP imitators, but if they're related to piperazines, manufacturers will have to find another alternative, as these too will fall under...
...with recent headlines showing that some legal highs are far from harmless, most in Britain are likely to support the new ban. Earlier this year, BZP was linked to the death of a 22-year-old British man who had reportedly also taken ecstasy. GBL, which is used legitimately as an industrial cleaning agent but is touted as a substitute for the outlawed date-rape drug GHB, has also garnered attention in the U.K. for its role in the death of a 21-year-old woman whose mother has crusaded to outlaw the chemical. "The key message to get across...