Legal High Ban Causes Surge In Interest

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BZP - one of the banned "legal highs"

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uploaded by Colonel Boyle

Since the Government announced that it was going to ban some of the so-called "herbal highs" in the new year, sellers are claiming that interest in these substances has soared.

If ever there was a textbook example of perverse incentives, it's here. The Government believe, on the basis of research, that some of the products currently being sold as legal alternative to illegal drugs pose a health risk. So, they ban them. The children are saved from yet another terrible blight.

On the face of it, this might sound reasonable. Think again.

Firstly, the ban drew attention to a class of substance that many people were previously unaware of. Up until August 24th, I'd never even heard of 'BZP' for example. Now I know that it's a chemical I can buy legally that will give me a high. Not only that, but the fact that Government is banning it suggests to me that it must be pretty effective. I also know that I have a limited time in which to buy it.

So it's no surprise that some suppliers are reporting massively increased sales of these herbal highs of up to 300%.

Amongst those buyers will undoubtably be people who've never given it a second thought before. So at a stroke the government have increased both the awareness and the actual size of the market.

And what happens after the ban comes into effect? Will people stop making BZP? Of course not: we now know that there's a market for it. So production and sales will move underground. Something that existed inside a regulatory framework of safety checks, marketing restrictions and controlled outlets will move into the hands of unscrupulous backstreet dealers. So if the product was unsafe before, it will certainly be even less safe now.

At this point, I'm legally obliged to mention the failure of Prohibition as historical precedent - as if this quaintly comical experiment is something of the distant past that we're too grown up to repeat. In fact, we banned a shedload of drugs back in the 70s, and all we've seen from the back of that policy is an ever-swelling army of criminalised drug users, rackateering and a catalogue of deaths.

And yet, legalisation and liberalisation is the only option no party of any stripe will dare to contemplate for fear of upsetting the Daily Mail.