I drafted this letter to Peter Dunne while sitting on the train this afternoon.

Dear Peter,

Re: Psychoactive Substances bill

I understand that your main motivation for promoting this legislation is safety.

I am concerned that the safety testing process for potentially approved psychoactive substances will be unnecessarily long-winded, prohibitively expensive, cruel (if tested on animals) and either too stringent or too lax to be effective. It will not be practically possible to establish likely adverse long-term effects of new psychoactive substances.

Drug users did not ask for this legislation.

Why not legalise substances such as cannabis, methylphenidate, BZP and MDMA?
All these substances have been trialled on humans and have good safety profiles.

Methylphenidate is routinely prescribed to children. Why not legalise it for adult recreational use?

Cannabis has been used safely for millennia. No one has ever died from a cannabis overdose.

If cannabis were already legal, demand for synthetic cannabinoids would be negligible and the proposed legislation would be unnecessary.

Yours sincerely,

Richard

Comments are welcome before I send it.