The Dangers Of Purchasing ‘Legal Highs’ From The Internet @ inef.ie

The Dangers Of Purchasing ‘Legal Highs’ From The Internet

Posted on May 22nd, 2011 TimB 3 comments

any drugs sold as ‘legal highs’ on the internet do not contain the ingredients they claim. Some instead contain controlled substances and are illegal to sell over the internet. These are findings of Dr. Mark Baron, who bought a range of tablets from different websites to see what each contained. The study is published in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis.

“It is clear that consumers are buying products that they think contain specific substances, but that in reality the labels are unreliable indicators of the actual contents,” says Dr. Baron, who works in the School of Natural and Applied Sciences at the University of Lincoln, UK.

Baron says that buyers need to be aware that they have no idea what they will be taking and that some of the products could contain illegal substances. “The product name cannot be used as an indication of what it contains as there is variation in the content of the same product name between different internet sites,” says Baron.

Recently there has been an explosion in the number of substances deemed ‘legal highs’ that can be found readily available on the internet . The UK and other governments have acted to control these products however, manufacturers and suppliers seem to be one step ahead as they attempt to offer new products outside of the restrictions of the current legislation.

Baron set out to determine the drug content of such products. Purchasing them was easy; numerous online legal-high retailers market a broad variety of products advertised as research chemicals, bath salts, or plant food although clearly marketed toward the recreational drug user . “No guidelines exist as to what is sold and in what purity and consumers are led to believe that purchased goods are entirely legal,” says Baron.

With just a few clicks Baron bought MDAI, 5-IAI, Benzo Fury and NRG-3 from www.benzofury.me.uk and two MDA-labelled samples from www.VIPlegals.com and www.wide-mouth-frog.com. Six out of seven products did not contain the advertised active ingredient more disturbingly five samples contained the controlled substances benzylpiperazine and 1-[3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]piperazine combined with caffeine.

“These findings show that the legal high market is providing a route to supply banned substances,” says Baron. He hopes that this work will help consumers become more aware of the dangers of purchasing products from the internet.

At the same time, legislators need to think fast. “As legislation deals with the current crop of products we can expect to see new products appearing that try to find a route of supplying previously banned substances,” says Baron.

Wiley-Blackwell

In the press legal high
3 responses to “The Dangers Of Purchasing ‘Legal Highs’ From The Internet”
- TotalImpostor May 22nd, 2011 at 18:05
  
  This is a useful study by Baron Mark, and I will confine myself to one comment, or else its possible I may merge with my computer. He states that: “It is clear that consumers are buying products that they think contain specific substances”. Yeah, I’m sure some do – and some city kids don’t know that milk is the mammary excretions of domesticated bovine slaves (and up to 3% pus, as permitted by the EC). But, to get to my (or to a) point, I think many if not most legal high consumers/users are as aware that what the product they are buying may contain ‘other ingredients’ as are most users of illegal (controlled) drugs. So-called adulterants have at least four forms in any case, with 2 or 3 sub-categories within each (see Ross Coomber’s papers for clues). Anyway, many ‘legal high’ products don’t state the chemical ingredient, and/or the small print would need an electron microscope to read (cf. the magnificent and challenging ‘Black Mamba’ – but hold on to your hat!). And, as any trained headshop retailer will tell you over the counter, it’s ‘not for human use’ – it’s incense, it’s bath salts, it’s room odorizer, it’s whatever the hell legal stuff has to be… Of course!
- TotalImpostor May 22nd, 2011 at 18:19
  
  Slight Return: and I just have to add – whilst making it clear I find this study laudable overall – that Baron makes another saliently daft comment: “These findings show that the legal high market is providing a route to supply banned substances”. LOLittyLOL. Like drug users need ANOTHER route to drugs controlled by national implementations of the UN Prohibition, the Great War on Drug Users. Drugs have never been so easy to obtain in most UK cities and towns. You thought a Tesco on every street corner was OTT? In 21st century Britain you can get drugs delivered to your door quicker than a pizza (and you never know what the ingredients of them pizzas are either). The Paradox of Prohibition? More like the Piss-Take of Prohibition.
- TotalImpostor May 22nd, 2011 at 19:30
  
  OK, and a third thing (all good things come in 3s) … would not a better term for these ‘legal highs’ (LHs) be’legal loophole drugs’? Language matters, words are the egoes of concepts, and thought is the little bitch of language. For instance, take the new LH benzodiazepine phenazepam, and the series of LH offshoots which are being generated and marketed as we browse and breathe. Phenazepam and its loophole chemical cousins are not LHs, they are more accurately ‘legal lows’ – if we are going to stick with our classic conceptual distinction between psychoactive uppers and downers. Pedantic? The alternative is being washed away by the tide of semantic sloppiness which emanates from our tabloids and TV trash, and ends up in our mental machinery and its output devices: the mouth and the hands.