Drugs

Home Office written question – answered at on 22 July 2015.

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Photo of Jim Shannon Jim Shannon Shadow DUP Spokesperson (Health), Shadow DUP Spokesperson (Transport), Shadow DUP Spokesperson (Equality)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to assess the mood-altering capacity of legal high substances available in the UK.

Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning The Minister of State, Home Department, The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice

The Psychoactive Substances Bill provides that a substance produces a psychoactive effect in a person if, by stimulating or depressing the person’s central nervous system, it affects the person’s mental functioning or emotional state.

Psychoactive substances cause an alteration in the individual’s state of consciousness by producing a range of effects including, but not limited to: hallucinations; drowsiness; as well as changes in mood, alertness, perception of time and space, or empathy with others.

In preparation for the planned implementation of the legislation in April 2016, we are committed to ensuring that there are mechanisms in place to determine the psychoactivity of seized substances in a timely and effective way.

A forensic strategy to underpin the Bill is being established with input from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) as well as the Forensic Regulator’s office to ensure that the quality of forensic evidence is maintained to satisfy the evidential standards in court proceedings.

We will put in place a testing regime that is proactive and can also respond quickly when new substances emerge where evidence of psychoactivity is required. We will build a database of substances and evidence of their psychoactivity, supported by the provision of chemical reference standards.

The Home Office’s Forensic Early Warning System (FEWS) has a proven record in improving the detection and identification of new substances in the UK, providing chemical reference standards and building capability in the forensic community. Through the expansion of FEWS, the Centre for Applied Science and Technology (CAST) will build on this work to meet any demand related to evidentially assessing psychoactivity. CAST is exploring how we harness existing evidence from the research community, international approaches and published data. As a priority, we will be taking forward the ACMD’s recommendation to develop a system for the biochemical and pharmacological profiling of new compounds.

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