Crack cocaine and date rape drugs could be dispensed over the counter by pharmacists according to bizarre proposals put forward by the Green Party.
Under the environment-focused party’s election policy, ‘specialist pharmacies’ could sell the substances to people wanting them for ‘recreational purposes for personal use’.
Making the drug legal, they argue, would make them safer and even reduce accidental overdoses or drug deaths.
But experts today labelled the proposals a PR stunt and warned it could lead to more, not less, drug abuse.
Others claimed it would put already stretched pharmacy teams at increased risk of abuse or even violence with one even asking if the Greens wanted them to start stocking alcohol as well.
Under the environment-focused party’s election policy, ‘specialist pharmacies’ could sell the substances to people wanting them for ‘recreational purposes for personal use’. Making the drug legal, they argue, would make them safer and even reduce accidental overdoses or drug deaths. Pictured, at the launch of their general election campaign this week, Green co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay said the party was offering ‘real hope and real change’
The party’s policies on drugs are among the most eye-catching with pledges to also allow prisoners access to medically-prescribed heroin
Party drug GHB, gamma hydroxybutyric acid, is often taken to relax, boost euphoria and even enhance sex.
But it also known as the ‘date rape drug’ used by predators to spike people’s drinks to rape or sexually assault others.
Professor Penny Ward, an expert in pharmaceutical medicines at Kings College London, told MailOnline: ‘You want to create a situation where people don’t become addicted to drugs in the first place.
‘And the problem with making things available through pharmacies that there is an annoying tendency for that to be a route to people simply abusing what they can.
‘We really need police assistance approach to this as an issue.’
She added: ‘It is a very lucrative market for the illicit drug suppliers and of course, a large proportion of crime in our cities, and indeed, increasingly rural areas.
‘The question is, how can you get rid of that? That is a legitimate question, and one we should really be trying to address instead.’
Meanwhile, Thorrun Govind, TV pharmacist and former chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: ‘Pharmacists and pharmacy teams are very used to dealing with highly sought after controlled drugs.
‘This could present a challenge for patients if they were seeking to stop taking drugs and were attending the pharmacy which was the also supplying those very same drugs.’
She added: ‘I can’t see this being something that would be widespread.
‘As pharmacists we work to support self care, prevention and treatment. Will the Green Party be suggesting we should stock alcohol too?’
Tony Schofield, owner of Gill and Schofield Pharmaceutical Chemists in the North East, told MailOnline: ‘This clearly is an attempt to catch the eye rather than a serious attempt to tackle, humanely and safely, drug misuse.
‘Pharmacies currently are known to stock drugs that are seriously misused, for which there is big demand and serious money in the trafficking of.
‘Staff, premises and other patients are currently at risk but there are regulations, storage requirements, procedures in place minimising these risks.
‘Possibly patients believing a drug is safe, as the Green Party appear to, may put pressure on staff if quantities are rationed.’
Ian Hamilton, associate professor of addiction at the University of York, also told this website: ‘I am less convinced by the idea of pharmacies being able to provide GHB for recreational use.
‘I think many pharmacists would be reluctant to do this and doubt whether many people using GHB recreationally would purchase their drugs this way, being anxious about being identified as a user of these drugs.’
Official figures released in December show drug deaths in England and Wales have reached an all-time high.
Released by the Office for National Statistics, data show there were 4,907 drug poisoning deaths in 2022 – a rate of 84.4 deaths per million people.
This is the tenth consecutive annual rise, up on the 4,859 recorded in 2021 and the most since records began in 1993.
Cocaine also killed a record number of people in 2022, with deaths soaring 80-fold over the last three decades, to 857.
Britain is now considered the cocaine capital of Europe, with the nation consuming around 117 tonnes of the substance per year.
Sales of the drug in the UK are estimated to be worth more than £25.7million a day.
Legalisation of illicit drugs is a complicated issue, with opponents concerned it will normalise and increase drug use leading to both health and social consequences.
But proponents claim making them legal would make them safer by capping their chemical strength and stopping contaminating with dangerous additives, reducing accidental overdoses and drug deaths as a result.
According to a Home Office report, class A drug use in England and Wales is estimated to cost the UK taxpayer over £15bn per year, mostly through drug-related crime.
Under the 1971 the Misuse of Drugs Act, drugs are put into three different classes based on their danger to people.
Class A is the most serious and includes substances like cocaine and crack, ecstasy, MDMA and heroin while codeine, ketamine and cannabis are deemed Class B.
So-called ‘date rape’ drug GHB, anabolic steroids, nitrous oxide and the stimulant khat, meanwhile, are among Class C drugs.
Current drug laws see those in possession of Class A drugs face up to seven years in prison, an unlimited fine or both. Anyone caught supplying or producing can face a life prison sentence, an unlimited fine or both.
People caught in possession of Class B face up to five years in prison, while anyone caught carrying Class Cs can be jailed for two years.
Under the Greens liberal policy, however, prisoners would be allowed access medically-prescribed heroin, while music festivals and nightclubs would be able to sell ‘low doses’ of MDMA.
The party has also proposed ‘direct partnerships’ between the UK Government and coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, farmers in South America to ensure a ‘sustainable supply’ of cocaine in Britain.
They added they also want to ‘explore options for piloting making crack cocaine available on NHS prescription’.
The policies aren’t new, having first been touted in 2019 ahead of the general election.
At the time they suggested ‘specially qualified pharmacists’ based in the community could dispense recreational drugs, such as powder cocaine and amphetamines, over the counter after a short, free-of-charge consultation with the drug user.
Pharmacists would be expected to give verbal and written harm reduction advice to users and verify their customers’ age, similar to selling alcohol in shops, to ensure no recreational drugs were sold to minors,
The party also proposed making heroin available on prescription ‘after a medical assessment by a doctor’.
These proposals were criticised by some senior health experts who argued the role of a pharmacist was to improve health and ‘incompatible’ with selling these substances for recreational use.
Other experts today, however, praised the Greens renewed approach to drugs policy.
The Green Party wants to ‘explore options for piloting making crack cocaine available on NHS prescription’. Under the 1971 the Misuse of Drugs Act, drugs are put into three different classes based on their danger to people. Class A is the most serious and includes substances like cocaine and crack, ecstasy, MDMA and heroin while codeine, ketamine and cannabis are deemed Class B
Graham Stretch, president of the Primary Care Pharmacy Association, told MailOnline: ‘I have long believed in harm minimisation and taking the profit — for criminals — out of drug misuse.
‘If individuals who misuse substances can find safe, clean and accessible sources for their supply they no longer have to offend and criminality will be reduced on our streets making communities, including pharmacies and surgeries, safer.
‘I would be generally supportive of the Greens approach.’
But he added: ‘As always the devil is in the details.
‘It is long past the time that an informed mature control approach was demonstrably needed in the UK as current prohibition & criminalisation has failed.
‘Criminalisation of drug use has caused enormous damage to our communities, socially, educationally, medically and criminally.’
Last year the Scottish Government called for all drugs to become legal for personal use.
SNP ministers claimed the ‘ambitious and radical plan’ was needed to address Scotland’s drug deaths crisis and that addicts should be ‘supported rather than criminalised’.
In a new paper, the party called for the policy to be implemented across the UK and demanded new powers to introduce it in Scotland if this was refused.
A joint statement from 10 leading drugs charities welcomed the report and said the Scottish Government must implement the drug consumption rooms and drug testing facilities ‘as a matter of urgency’.
However, the proposals were dismissed within an hour of their publication by the Government.
Source: Mail Online
