News Flash and Social Activities
Teenagers' deaths were not caused by "legal high" mephedrone
June, 06 2010
Teenagers' deaths were not caused by "legal high" mephedrone
Two teenagers whose deaths were linked to the “legal high” mephedrone, prompting politicians to rush out a contoversial ban, had not taken the drug, reports suggest.
Leading scientists last night criticised the outlawing of the drug — before a single autopsy had been conducted — as an embarassing fiasco borne of political opportunism and tabloid frenzy.
The deaths of Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, in March 2010 triggered widespread concern about the chemical. At the time Humberside Police, which carried out an initial investigation into the deaths, said there was information to suggest it was linked to mephedrone.
Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, announced a ban a few weeks later, followin a row between politicians and scientists. The synthetic stimulant, also known as Meow, bubbles and M-CAT, was made a Class B drug alongside amphetamines and cannabis. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommended a ban saying it was “likely to be harmful”, but many questioned the political pressure put on the body, which had acted despite incomplete research. Two members of the committee quit in protest, while The Lancet medical journal warned that politics had been allowed to “contaminate” a proper appraisal of the evidence.
However the BBC reported last night that toxicology tests had revealed there were no traces of mephedrone in teenagers’ blood. It is thought that the pair, from Scunthorpe, had been drinking and had taken methadone, a synthetic heroin substitute.
Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, described the reported toxicology findings as a “shocking and salutary lesson to the tabloid journalists and prejudiced politicians”.
“[They] held a gun to the heads of the ACMD and demanded that this drug should be banned, before a single autopsy had been completed. The only good that might emerge from this fiasco is a long-overdue review of drug control policy.
“The politicians talk about using drug classification as a way of sending “messages” to young people. I fear that the only message that will be sent by the hasty decision on mephedrone is that the present drug laws deserve no respect.”
Humberside Police would not be drawn on the results, but said the pathology report was not yet complete. North East Lincoln Coroners Court refused to comment ahead of th inquest.
Professor Blakemore said that had the recommendations of the UK Drug Policy Commission been followed — with new street drugs causing concern put in a “pending category” with some controls, short of illegality — such embarrassment would have been avoided. Prof Les King, member of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, added that the role of Humberside Police at the time needs to be investigated. “It was indeed these two deaths that led to the biggest media frenzy about drugs that I can recall. And it was these two deaths that put pressure on the Home Secretary for mephedrone to be controlled.
Eric Carlin, one of the ACMD members who quit over the row, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme the decision to ban the drug should be “revisited” in light of the findings.
“The fact these two people died and it’s not actually connected with mephedrone just emphasises the fact that we were under a lot of pressure to ban this drug and these cases were actually cited as being examples of why that was necessary,” he said.
Mephedrone has been implicated in the deaths of 34 people in the UK — 26 in England and eight in Scotland. But so far, the drug has been established as a cause of death in only one case in England, that of John Stirling Smith.
On Thursday, a coroner in Brighton said Mr Stirling Smith, who was 46 and had underlying health problems, died after after “injecting mephedrone repeatedly”.
The European Union has also ordered a report into the health and social risks of mephedrone from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
According to Timesonlline http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7139387.ece
