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UK: North Devon police, councillor and MP's calls to ban legal highs branded 'illogical and hypocritical'

NDJDuncan

North Devon Journal

Saturday 22 Nov 2014

FRESH calls in North Devon for a blanket ban on legal highs in have been branded “illogical and hypocritical”.

Councillors, police and the region’s MP have called for legislation against the widely available substances on the basis that they are dangerous.

But that position cannot logically be taken without calling for a similar ban on alcohol and tobacco, according to a local campaigner.

According to North Devon councillor Joe Tucker said, the nickname ‘legal highs’ implies they are safe, when there are in fact “a number of incidents, including fatalities, that show this is not the case.”

North Devon MP Nick Harvey agrees, adding that the prevalence of shops selling them is “very worrying”.

“Around 350 new psychoactive substances have been banned but the sellers and manufacturers seem to be keeping one step ahead,” he said.

“The police can only act if the use of a legal high causes anti-social behaviour, so the safe solution is a blanket ban."

Mr Harvey has vowed to raise the matter in parliament and find out if the Government is considering laws to ban the substances all together.

But taking the legal high critics’ argument to its logical conclusion would mean outlawing tobacco and alcohol, according to the chairman of a local Cannabis club.

Daryl Sullivan, from the Devon Cannabis Club, said: “North Devon Council surely can’t be oblivious to the hypocrisy of using the tired line, ‘Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it is safe’ as a justification for banning something, whilst at the same time allowing the sale of the two most deadly drugs in the country to continue unabated.

“But then again, the alcohol and tobacco lobbies are more powerful than the shops which sell legal highs.”

Daryl claimed the comments of Councillor Tucker and Mr Harvey contradicted “all the evidence”.

He points to the recent Home Office report – ‘Drugs: International Comparators’ – which looked at drug policy globally and concluded that criminal penalties for drug possession have no effect on levels of drug use.

Daryl said that rather than banning legal highs, “a far more sensible option would be to realise that they only exist because of the continued prohibition of the drugs they are trying to imitate, and to decriminalise and regulate the sale of those drugs rather than continue down the failed path of the ‘War on Drugs’.”

http://www.northdevonjournal.co.uk/North-Devon-police-councillor-MP-s-calls-ban/story-24604148-detail/story.html

 

 

 

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