@BaldEagle 984170 wrote:
simple answer drug giants like pfiezer and glaxo, smith/klien will probably fight this as they know that it would be a first step, advocates for tighter substance control could then convince parliament that
some of their more profitable lines, have tighter controls and that effects bottom line.
the big pharm companies kowtowed to the drugs control laws a few years before either of us were born – our parents generation had a “legal highs scene” too – until the early 1980s loose prescription of pharms (especially by younger newly qualified doctors) and overt diversion/theft was widespread and rife across Europe. It was tolerated for a few years but eventually the brand names kept being mentioned in the papers alongside overdoses, side effects, road crashes etc and created more bad publicity for the pharm companies than good.
Other than stimulants (only indicated for specific medical conditions and very rarely prescribed to young adults even if they do have ADHD) controlled substances remain widely prescribed in UK healthcare especially to seniors – earlier today at work I was fixing a computer inside a room that contained hundreds of grams of pure heroin, fentanyl, and all sorts else (but all very carefully counted and audited (as much to stop accidental overdoses of patients as to prevent diversion) and the it is all kept within a further secure store that requires a bulky and unusual key to open it and is impossible to get to this area without an electronic pass key for many doors and every possible route is monitored by a CCTV camera.
Although some of the security methods used are 40 years old and in England they deliberately still use analogue fax machines to confirm the presciption info (the line noise, skewed paper feeds and any other defects ironically make this are more secure than fully digital systems as a computer generated image would lack these.
A lot of the NPS sold in UK until this week had already been made controlled substances in other European countries for years – many countries viewed as more tolerant than the UK would never have allowed the marketing of mislabelled branded blends of random chemicals for any purpose; not even as WC cleaner.
However this new law is flawed for a lot of reasons – it might solve a short term problem but younger people who are willing to take more risks or have already been in trouble are simply going to return to illegal hard drugs; the older people in their 30s/40s using the better quality stuff for a boost of energy for work or to relax after work will may instead use more caffeine, smoke more cigarettes, and start drinking alcohol in more quantities which is likely at some point to make them ill in their middle age. Even if the govt gets tax from these all the better NPS dealers were often tax and VAT registered so still providing revenue that the NHS could use but via a less harmful trade.
These older more responsible users are the workers, managers, parents, teachers, engineers and scientists that need to pass their skills on to the youth ; difficult enough without increasing the chances of them keeling over from heart attacks or ending up in the senior home before they get the chance to this (and that the youth are themselves disaffected as literally every bit of fun they could have in life is increasingly restricted).
