Prohibitionists Say the Drugs They
Banned Are Safer Than the Ones They Didn't
Jacob
Sullum
Jun. 26, 2013 3:58 pm
UNODCIn a
report issued today, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
sounds the alarm about synthetic, quasi-legal drugs such as
"spice," "bath salts," and "meow-meow,"
saying "the international drug control system is floundering"
due to "the speed and creativity" of underground
chemists:
- The number of NPS [new psychoactive substances] reported by Member
States to UNODC rose from 166 at the end of 2009 to 251 by mid-2012, an
increase of more than 50 per cent. For the first time, the number of NPS
actually exceeded the total number of substances under international
control (234).
Control is something of a misnomer in this context, since illegal
drugs are anything but controlled. Yet the same is true of uncontrolled
substances when they are ostensibly not intended for human consumption,
the dodge that sellers of psychoactive "incense" and "bath
salts" use to stay within the law. "This is an alarming drug
problem,"
says the UNODC, "but the drugs are legal." Reuters
explains that "new psychoactive substances can be made by
slightly modifying the molecular structure of controlled drugs, making a
new drug with similar effects which can elude national and international
bans." The UNODC worries that "the adverse effects and
addictive potential of most of these uncontrolled substances are at best
poorly understood." It says the new drugs "can have deadly
consequences for their users but are hard to control, with dynamic, fast
mutating producers and 'product lines.'" It warns that they
"have not been tested for safety" and "can be far more
dangerous than traditional drugs." Those safer,
"traditional" drugs would be the ones that governments have
arbitrarily chosen to ban, thereby driving consumers to more hazardous
substitutes. The UNODC likewise notes "concerns about the violence
generated by illicit drug trafficking" without mentioning
prohibition's role in making otherwise pacific markets violent. Talk
about floundering.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/26/prohibitionists-say-the-drugs-they-banne
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