“Legal Highs” Are Greatest Global Threat, Not Marijuana

by Rick Thompson

The UN Admits Chemists In Asia Create One New Lethal Designer Drug Per Week But Still Choose To Focus On Marijuana Prohibition

 

New designer drugs are emerging in the global marketplace that simulate the effects of drugs like cocaine and heroin- but are completely legal, according to a new report issued by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB).

The pair of reports, which were issued on March 5, 2013, covering the year 2012 and analyzing statistical data from 2011, points a finger at chemists in southeast Asia as the creators of these new psychoactive drugs that are not subject to normal international treaties or other forms of control.

INCB President Raymond Yans identifies the United Kingdom as the origin point for much of the proliferation of legal psychotropics since the market developed there via online pharmacies, which then spread to America and the rest of the Western world.

The United States has struggled to keep up with the flood of new psychotropic drugs. The DEA has banned several of the precursor chemicals and individual states have taken steps to block sale or distribution of the drugs. K2, Spice, bath salts- these are just some of the chemicals Americans are familiar with from seeing videos of crazed users on network television and on cable news stations.
The British news source The Guardian reports: “Yans said

legal highs were now multiplying at an alarming rate, with more than one a week appearing on the market – almost 10 times the number that were being marketed a decade ago.” Yans cites Japan as a leader in combating the designer drugs- they have banned 53 of the emergent substances already. The UK has a system in place to identify and restrict these new drugs as they appear on the market.

The reports are also critical of United States marijuana policy- specifically the legalized personal use of cannabis in Washington and Colorado.  The INCB also took issue with medical marijuana in states like Michigan and California. “In some US states they are being operated in a way that is completely inappropriate and outside of the (international drug) conventions,” the report claims.
Yans describes the medical marijuana laws as “a back-door to legalisation for recreational use”. He reported that the INCB has been reassured by US Attorney General Eric Holder that federal laws prohibiting cultivation and use of marijuana would stand. Yans described the personal use and medical use of cannabis as “a threat to public health and wellbeing.”

Read the full text of the UN Narcotic_Drugs_Report_2012
Read the full text of the UN psychotropic substances report 2012
Source: The Compassion Chronicles