"Legal Highs on the Rise"

I came across this article today on New Scientist. The article reminded me of the recent Smokers debate, where I got the impression that a lot of people would like to see a total ban on tobacco.

Whilst I think that restricting smoking in confined public places is a fundamentally good idea, reducing significantly the risk of non-smokers developing health problems through passive smoking, a total ban on smoking should be reviewed with more consideration. The issue is complicated because it would involve answers to hazy questions involving free will and explanations of the diverging perceptions society has of drug users in general.

The main problem, I feel is that there doesn’t seem to be one single universal opinion of what is or isn’t acceptable; the confusion classifications of legal and illegal drugs distort with each change in government. Not so many years ago, gentlemen carried snuffboxes and Coca-Cola actually contained coca a plant now used to make cocaine.

The confusion extends so that even the definition of a drug is disputed. Wikipedia defines a drug as “any substance that can be used to modify a chemical process or processes in the body, for example to treat an illness, relieve a symptom, enhance a performance or ability, or to alter states of mind.” It clearly recognises the existence of recreational drugs.

However the Labour government’s definition, which states that a drug “includes any substances or mixture of substances manufactured, sold, or represented for use in: the diagnosis, treatment, mitigation, or prevention of a disease, disorder, abnormal physical state, or the physical symptoms thereof, in man or animal,” makes no mention of drugs that aren’t medicinal.

It would be much simpler if the government were to legislate and restrict the use of all recreational drugs, this would include everyday stimulants and depressives such as caffeine, nicotine and alcohol. Could we see future legislation on herbal drugs such as Salvia divinorum, a hallucinogen, or benzylpiperazine, an ecstasy alternative? If that were to be the case shouldn’t the government also ban the addition of E- numbers to processed food as they have been proven to be detrimental to our health, or better still, why not ban processed foods altogether?

A State cannot hope to control so much of a person’s life, in fact, it shouldn’t unless it were striving to become a vision of Big Brother.