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If you buy poppers in the UK after Christmas, you could go to jail for seven years
Selling or buying poppers in the UK could land you in jail for seven years, according to new legislation being enacted by the Government.
Home Office Minister Mike Penning has reportedly said he is insistent that amyl nitrates, widely used in the British LGBTI community, must come under new legislation that bans ‘legal highs’.
Lawmakers are banning the drug under a ‘blanket ban’ on the production, distribution, sale and supply of psychoactive substances. This ban will cover many substances including laughing gas, salvia and vanilla sky, but alcohol, nicotine and caffeine are exempt.
Gay rights activists, as well as a committee looking over the bill, argued poppers are ‘not seen to be capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a societal problem’.
David Bridle, managing editor at London gay scene magazine Boyz, said at a meeting held last night (9 November) with the minister, LGBTI activists and the National AIDS Trust that it made sense for poppers to be regulated under current sex shop licensing and therefore continuing to be available to over 18 gay men as the sex tool they have been for over 30 years.
‘The minister was unmoved, even after I explained our Boyz readers and others in the gay community were “gobsmacked” this Conservative government (of equal marriage and other pro-gay policies) was banning poppers,’ he said.
Penning has previously said the Misuse of Drugs Act will ‘fundamentally change the way we tackle new psychoactive substances’.
‘It will put an end to the game of cat and mouse in which new drugs appear on the market more quickly than Government can identify and ban them’.
Activists are now appealing for a review, but as it stands now, poppers will be banned in the UK for sale or purchase. This includes importing from online websites from next year.
The law will be enacted by trading standards officers from April 2016.
Gay Star News has contacted the Home Office and is awaiting a response.
The post If you buy poppers in the UK after Christmas, you could go to jail for seven years appeared first on Gay Star News.
Joe Morgan
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