Originally Posted by Mr Jan Yeo
This might sail a bit close to the wind for a family forum so I understand if Mark or mods want to chop it out, however the emphasis is on the legal part.
I watched a programme on BBC Three the other night which looked at products which can have similar effects to illegal drugs but are available over the counter (Spice is one brand which has been in the news recently). Essentially though it's all pretty scary stuff which just skirts around the drug laws. For example the presenter (George Lamb, who does a radio show in 6 Music) mapped out the chemical make up of MDMA which is the key ingredient of Ecstasy. Simply by adding an extra Oxygen atom it alters it so that basically it won't be covered by the misuse of drugs act. Additionally the packet can be marked as 'not for human consumption' which gets it through another boundary so that it can be fast tracked to retailers. The problem with this is that it hasn't been tested and no one really knows the long term effects that this stuff could have, especially as a lot of it is pretty powerful. I think that at one point an interviewee said that illegal drugs like MDMA are safer because it's a formula which has been around for a long time.
Anyway as part of the show the bloke did actually try something (after a pretty rigourous medical and physcological check up) and smoked something called Salvia (sp??) through a bong. To begin with he said that he felt nothing but on the third hit you could see the effect it had as he basically looked really high. It was sort of buzzy and despite having spent years doing all sorts of nasty stuff in the music industry it knocked him for 6 but within a few minutes he was back down.
So this rather long winded post comes down to some simple points. What are people's opinions on it all, is it all hype over nothing or a serious case of some nasty products being sold without regulation? And has anyone ever tried a 'legal' high like this (e.g Spice, that Salvia stuff, NOS or the like)?
To me it all sounds pretty dangerous (even though some are created from natural plants etc.) but is fairly intriguing nonetheless.
