SNP: Believing the mephedrone hype

As the hysteria over Mephedrone in the mainstream media builds towards fever pitch, the SNP have tried to prove to the world that their agenda is set by the tabloids EVEN MORE than the Labour party.

Nice hair Fergus

SNP MSP Fergus Ewing has trumpeted how he has written to the UK government demanding a ban on mephedrone, and now Alex Salmond claims he won’t wait for them to take action. Yesterday’s Daily Record carried the headline ‘Alex Salmond ready to ban legal drug mephedrone before UK government,’ which conveniently ignores the fact that the Scottish Government doesn’t legally have the power to do any such thing.

In fact what’s being proposed at Scottish level is a package of education materials getting put together for distribution to schools and young people. This is, of course, something that SSY would support, as long as the information was based on actual science and not tabloid bullshit. Unfortunately, the SNP’s rush to embrace the tabloid driven BAN IT NOW!!! campaign doesn’t fill us with confidence.

A sane and scientific perspective is hard to come by in the whole debate. You have to turn to Leftfield favourite Professor David Nutt, the man the government sacked for telling the scientific truth about drugs.

One reason that the government hasn’t quite got round to doing as the tabloids command them yet is that their own scientific advisory committee is in chaos after they sacked Professor Nutt, and many of his colleagues resigned in sympathy. The man picked by the government as the new head of the committee, Prof. Les Iverson, has hinted that he will recommend banning mephedrone.

However, Prof. Nutt says: “”The Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs could say that one confirmed death is enough evidence to make mephedrone a controlled drug, or they could say they believe in the precautionary principle, but neither of those is scientific and if they do go down that route then they will have lost scientific credibility. It is an open question whether mephedrone is more or less harmful than MDMA [the main component of ecstasy]. We really don’t know, but I would say that they are probably similar.”

As an alternative to banning, Prof. Nutt recommends “some sort of regulated use for MDMA or mephedrone where people, maybe in clubs, could have access to small amounts, safe amounts under guidance”.

Of course, the voices of people who actually know what they’re talking about, like drugs workers or Prof. Nutt, are being totally drowned out in the media authoritarian frenzy. But sooner or later our society will have to come to terms with the actual scientific facts, rather than the insane pseudo-science of the “anti-drugs” lobby. That is, prohibition has always done far more harm than good, and has never prevented people from taking drugs. The main social consequence of banning drugs is that you make the people that sell them into extremely rich criminals. Potential mephedrone dealers will no doubt be very glad of the free advertising they’re getting, just before the government opens up a tax-free black market for them to profit from.

Bonus: Check out Prof. Nutt’s scientific paper ‘Equasy’, where he shows that more people are hurt and killed by taking part in equestrian activities (horse riding basically) than through taking ecstasy. As he says in the paper:

“coverage of the classification of cannabis and the ongoing review of ‘ecstasy’/ MDMA has shown that the arguments about relative drug harms are occurring in an arcane manner, at times taking a quasi-religious character reminiscent of medieval debates about angels and the heads of pins!”