Death of a Brain Cell

I have never really understood the compulsion of people to addle their brain with poorly understood chemicals. At least the legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine have well-established dangers and side-effects making their use slightly rational. You can weigh the risks against the supposed benefits in a somewhat reasoned manner. Of course, you may not be making rational decisions about your favorite legal drug, but at least you can.

Most of the new party drugs, however, have virtually no experimental information available on them at all. Worse, they have virtually no chemical analysis on them as well, choosing to hide their formulation in lists of natural ingredients (note: opium is natural) and trade name chemicals. The latest of these is JWH-018, known as “Chemical Cannabis“, marketed as Spice. 

There is nothing “chemical” about this. These are just distant cousins of plants like cannabis and opium. Distant enough to avoid the law, but not distant enough to avoid the psychoactive effects. They are marketed virtuously as being a “safe” alternative to illegal drugs. Seeing as we have virtually no information on them, I would say this is a very hollow assurance. For all we know, users of these drugs may become psychotic zombies in 28 days time and eat us (or worse, start talking like game-show hosts!)

Most of the information we have about these drugs comes from botanical texts rather than scientific trials. Take JWH-018 for instance, its active ingredients are:

• Baybean (Canavalia Maritima) – known to have similar psychotropic effects as cannabis.
• Blue Lily/Lotus (Nymphaea caerulea) – contains psychotropic alkaloids (ever heard of the lotus eaters? now you know what they were eating)
• Skullcap (Scutellaria nana) – widely used as a tranquilizer in other herbal products. 
• Indian Worrior (Pedicularis densiflora) – a weed that contains a powerful muscle relaxant.
• Lion’s Tail (Leonotis leonurus) – Also known as “wild dagga” because of it’s cannabis-like effects. 
• Maconha Brava (Zornia latifolia) – yet another cannabis substitute. Also known to have powerful oestrogen-like effects. Expect further falls in the Kiwi sperm count.
• Indian Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) – Contains the same alkaloids as the blue lotus but in lesser amounts.
• Siberian Motherwort (Leonurus sibiricus) – Similar to Lion’s tail.

See anything chemical there? These are all plants that have been used at one time or another as cannabis substitutes. The drug pushers manufacturers have simply taken the most promising candidates and shoved them into a pill, regardless of potential interactions and side effects.

The problem with the current system is that it allows these dope peddlers to push potentially dangerous drugs at the most vulnerable section of our community – our young people. People between the ages of 16 and 25 are notoriously bad at assessing health risks. Yet we allow virtually unsupervised experimentation on them. Only after months and sometimes years of exposure do we then step in and ban the substance. This is, quite simply, the exact opposite of what should be happening.

Banning a drug after years of established use is stupid. Prohibition of alcohol should tell us that, at least. Once a drug gains social acceptability, it is virtually impossible to eliminate. Witness the uphill battle being fought against the drug nicotine. And that is a drug for which we have mountains of evidence, all of it bad. Allowing a substance like BZP to become popular and then banning it, is madness. All the ban does is add to its mystique. And a dozen other noxious substances emerge to take it’s place.

What really needs to happen, is that all drugs marketed for psychoactive effects should be subject to the same controls as pharmaceuticals. There needs to be experimental evidence of their safety and they should be subject to the same long-term safety assessments as a normal medication. I really don’t care if this triples the price of this stuff. This is the least protection we should be providing for our young people.

Some may object that this will also catch all the supermarket herbals and even some of the teas (chamomile, for instance). Certain well-established plants and herbals can be excluded from the requirements but it is important not to make the exclusions to broad. The kind of people who will happily market pills to youth without a thought about possible side effects, will not hesitant to plunk the same drugs into a tea-bag and call it a herbal tea.

Note that I am not advocating pharmaceutical style regulation for all nutritional substances and herbals, but just for the ones that purport to have some psycho-activity and are marketed for this. Regardless of how you feel about the benefits of vitamins and herbals, putting them all through pharmaceutical standards would not have any benefit on the health of New Zealanders. Few of us are in danger of being poisoned by a bit of Dom-Quai.

At least I know that, if I drink too much alcohol, I will kill brain cells. God should not be the only one who knows how many brain cells our young people are killing when they take these new “recreational” drugs.

Update:

Yet another “recreational” drug with unpredictable side effects, being marketed without the slightest control. How long are we going to tolerate this absurd situation?

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