Thread: UK - Legal highs causing 'violent and bizarre' behaviour are banned

A “legal high” which emulates the effects of cocaine is being banned because of fears over “bizarre and violent behaviour” linked with the drug.

The substance ethylphenidate, which is marketed as “Gogaine” and “Burst”, will become temporarily banned at midnight to give Home Office experts time to consider a permanent ban.

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Four other similar drugs will also be made illegal at the same time.

It means that anyone caught supplying or manufacturing the drugs will face up to 14 years’ imprisonment on conviction, while police will be able to confiscate the drug from anyone found in possession.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Ethylphenidate, one of the drugs being banned, has emerged as an alternative to cocaine and is sold using the street names ‘Gogaine’ and ‘Burst’.

“Users have been known to inject the drug, putting themselves at risk of blood-borne disease and infection.”

Like many other so-called legal highs, Gogaine is marketed as “not for human consumption” in a bid to get around drug laws.

It is also marketed as “Nopaine”, “Fake cocaine”, “Banshee Dust” and “Evoke”, at a price of about £15 for a gram.

Sales of “Burst” had presented a particular problem in Scotland, according to a report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the Government’s official drugs advisers.

“Ethylphenidate-based products are a growing issue in Edinburgh and their use is associated with bizarre and violent behaviour,” it said.

“Police Scotland reported that related practices include: communal injecting, users injecting each other due to rapid onset of effects and loss of fine motor control, needle sharing, injecting in unsanitary environments, high-risk injecting (in the neck and groin), and preparation with citric acid to improve water solubility, which additionally increases the corrosive nature of the substance.”

It added: “Avon and Somerset and Devon and Cornwall Police have had similar reports.”

Taunton had seen particular problems with injection of legal highs, which are also known as novel psychoactive substances (NPS).

“Throughout 2014 the market town of Taunton in Somerset has been hit with an epidemic of NPS injecting with all products originating from the one head shop located in the main High Street,” said the ACMD report.

“The injecting was happening in open public places including public toilets and users were abandoning their injecting works on the surrounding ground resulting on one occasion with a local six-year old receiving a needle stick injury.

“In one clear up day in Taunton town centre, over 200 needles were recovered.”

The four other substances banned by the new order are 3,4-dichloromethylphenidate, methylnaphthidate, isopropylphenidate and propylphenidate.


Legal highs causing 'violent and bizarre' behaviour are banned - Telegraph

If natural, organic drugs were legalised, e.g. cannabis in its herb or resin form, we wouldn't have this epidemic of substance abuse by young folk unable to acquire decent stuff.

The Chinese of course are the pioneers in developing chemical highs and as soon as one series of drugs are banned they alter the structure of the substance and export it until they in turn are banned. And the game goes on, and on and on.

Seems by those standards, alcohol should be banned....

Originally Posted by CSFFan

Seems by those standards, alcohol should be banned....

They tried that in the States one time called the 18th amendment to the Constitution or better known as Prohibition.



Didn't work

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

If natural, organic drugs were legalised, e.g. cannabis in its herb or resin form, we wouldn't have this epidemic of substance abuse by young folk unable to acquire decent stuff.

'Nature' is not a mystically benign cosmic force. Stuff that comes from 'nature' is not inherently 'good'.

Are these legal substances abroad also legal in Thailand ?

tried some puff from one o those legal-high stores

most of it went down the toilet.

Originally Posted by Looper

'Nature' is not a mystically benign cosmic force. Stuff that comes from 'nature' is not inherently 'good'.

it is if it gets you high.

Pointless as the chemists behind this stuff just change the formula slightly to get around the ban. Friends son is a manager of one of these shops, takes a few thousand over a weekend sometimes.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Originally Posted by CSFFan

Seems by those standards, alcohol should be banned....

They tried that in the States one time called the 18th amendment to the Constitution or better known as Prohibition.



Didn't work

We obviously didn't learn anything from that, so there is no reason to expect the rest of the World to. Prohibition worked just fine for Al Capone and others like him, the exact same way our present drug laws work so fine for Mexican drug cartels and other criminals.