Policing and crime minister Sarah Jones has written to the ACMD accepting most of the recommendations in the agency’s updated harms assessment of synthetic cathinones – a range of stimulants that includes mephedrone, MDPV (often sold as ‘monkey dust’) and other substances.
The government accepts the ACMD’s recommendation that the drugs remain class B, as well as that the generic text in the Misuse of Drugs Act should be updated to capture those cathinones not currently included. After consulting with academia, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and others, no legitimate uses for the drugs that would be newly controlled have been identified, the government states, adding that draft legislation will now be placed before Parliament ‘as a matter of urgency’.
The recommendation that commissioners, drug services, local authorities, mental health trusts and others should review their referral pathways and services to make sure they ‘adequately encompass’ people using synthetic cathinones has also been accepted. ‘Specifically, these services and their staff should be aware of the latest evidence on harms, as contained in this report, and their care pathways must be accessible and able to provide high-quality care for those living with relevant mental health and drug use disorders,’ it says. The government also agreed that more detailed information on the effects of synthetic cathinones should be made available to health, social care, criminal justice and housing staff, among others.
Other recommendations have only been partially accepted, however, such as that the ‘Housing First’ model should be used to tackle homelessness among people using synthetic cathinones, as it is at local authorities’ discretion how to use homelessness and rough sleeping funding to meet local needs. Recommendations that ‘more detailed and regular analysis of the contents of “monkey dust” and other commonly encountered NPS preparations should be carried out to monitor their contents and, when possible, purity’ as well as more street drug field testing for cathinones were not accepted – as police forensics budgets are limited, and local chief constables should determine where testing is most effectively deployed.
Research published by The Loop in 2022 found that nearly half of MDMA sold at UK festivals the year after COVID was fake – following both the pandemic-related drop in demand and supply-chain issues – with most instead containing synthetic cathinones and caffeine. However, EUDA recently warned that synthetic cathinones were once more ‘gaining ground’ in the European drug market – often sold as ‘legal’ replacements for drugs like MDMA, cocaine or amphetamine. ‘Most cathinone use appears to be recreational and involves snorting or ingesting, but injecting is also reported in high-risk settings,’ the agency states.
Synthetic cathinones: an updated harms assessment available here
Response letter from Sarah Jones to the ACMD available here