
Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stephen Rolles: Through publishing articles like the ones mentioned, the tabloid press is inadvertently giving free ad space to legal high companies. The articles often state the name of the drug, its effects, that it’s cheap and that it’s freely available on the internet – everything a potential consumer would need to hear to arouse their interest.So would it be fair to say that media hysteria in fact causes an increased interest in legal highs?
I would say that's fair, yeah; it's clearly what's happened in many cases. The surge in interest immediately follows the publication of the articles. It even echoes the coverage given to ecstasy in the late 80s: as more panicked media surrounded the rave subculture, more people were introduced to it.
Advertisement
No. If anything, knee-jerk enforcement responses often exacerbate the problems. Once you shut down a website, consumers will simply go to one of the other myriad sites offering the product. And once a drug gets enough tabloid attention for people to demand that it be made illegal, a ban simply moves the marketplace underground, making the products even more risky as the contents, strength and purity become less reliable.And people just come up with new stuff anyway, right?
Yeah, a new product with unknown risks will emerge to fill the vacuum created by the ban, as has happened repeatedly over the past few years. It's important to note that the media can also sometimes usefully warn about the harms of certain drugs, legal or illegal. When there are fair reports about high risk products or rogue batches, interest seems to decrease or stabilise, like in the case of the legal high "Annihilation".Yeah, I mean maybe its name alone had something to do with that. What do you think the future of legal highs depends on?
Well, policy makers only have a couple of options: they can leave these products in the hands of unregulated websites and head shops, or they can try to ban them, which tends to make the problem worse. What's needed is a third option that allows for risky products to be evaluated and have production and sales properly regulated, which is exactly the model being developed in New Zealand. We need pragmatic market regulation rather than endless futile and counterproductive bans.
Advertisement
