Substance abuse and the law: Psychedelic pharmacology

Misuse of drugs act Misuse of drugs regulation Temporary class drug orders Psychoactive substances

• Pre 1916 drug use was hardly controlled • Drugs were used by troops in the first world war started to grow concern o Department stores, including Harrods, sold kits containing syringes, needles and tubes of cocaine and heroin o Promoted as a present for friends on the frontline, to make life in the trenches more bearable and alleviate the horrors of war • From 1926 non-medical drug distribution and use was criminalised… • …but these drugs were available to ‘addicts’ through doctors

By name or structural features

• Drugs can have schedules e.g., class A schedule 1 which is LSD and MDMA • Schedule 2 and 3: illegal to possess without prescription. Drugs here are seen to have some medical use but are dangerous as can be addictive • Difference between schedule 2 and 3 is the amounts in which you can be given • Liquid cocaine can be used as a local anaesthetic especially with nasal surgery, this is because it is a vasoconstrictor (hence is schedule 2) • Schedule 4: not the same prescription or safe custody requirements • Schedule 5: no requirements, can contain those at a high schedule but if at lower concentrations then not as restricted i.e., co-codamol which has some codeine, paracetamol • The scheduling of tramadol was changed in 2014 from Sch. 4 to 3

o When you take it: vasodilator, opens smooth muscle and causes rush of blood to head, makes people feel lightheaded and drunk o Is NO psychoactive? Unknown, has effects but doesn’t necessarily act on receptors

• Portugal changed how drug use was dealt with due to their 2001 HIV crisis • Commonly misconstrued that all drugs are legal- they are illegal, but personal possession is an administrative offence rather than criminal (possession with intent to distribute is still prosecuted) • Seen as a health problem with those found in possession of illegal drugs managed by the ‘commission for the dissuasion of drug addiction’ • Focus is on harm reduction, treatment, and rehabilitation

• Cannabis class B under the misuse of drugs act 1971 (moved from class C in 2009) • 1st November 2018: some cannabis-derived medicinal products moved from misuse of Drugs regulations 2001 schedule 1 to schedule 2

 Psychoactive effects  Cannabinoids are odourless and not easy to detect its also more potent

 The NPS are liquid, and the letters are soaked in this drug outside of the prison, dried and then it is smuggled or posted into the prison  They prisoners will then smoke them

 Leads to violence, injury  Strain on NHS  The NPS are more potent so can lead to overdose

 NPS trained dogs  Then qualified using UPLC-MS/TOF

 Screen all letters etc before given to inmates to prevent drugs getting into prisons. Cost? Time?  Only allow electronic communication (e.g., email?). does that exclude some from communications? Problems?  More frequent drug screens and harsher punishments to deter drug use?  Let them have cannabis?

• ψυχη psyche, ‘soul, mind’ • δηλειν delein, ‘to manifest’ • Induce experiences quantitatively different from ordinary consciousness o Meditation o Dreaming o Trance o Religious ecstasy • “Closing your eyes transports you to this other world, as real as any other, where sound becomes light and light becomes colour and colour turns into geometry… I am either dreaming awake or I am dead.”

• Psychedelics have a long history of use in medicine and religion • Peyote cactus- eaten Lophophora williamsii • Ayahuasca plant- up nose • MAOI + Ayahuasca plant= liquid form which can be drunk for psychedelic effects