The highs and lows of legal highs

摘要

The new government has announced that 'legal highs' are to be tackled by the use of , early warning' bans. About a year ago, I was involved in the investigation of an importer of one of these so-called legal highs. We'd been contacted by the police following a death that was suspected to be linked to the consumption of the club drug GBL (gamma-butyrolactone), asking us for assistance in tackling a trader just about to receive a consignment of 6,000 litres of GBL from China. The trader claimed they were doing nothing illegal, even if people were buying it to consume.