Pubdate: Thu, 21 Jan 2016
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Frances Perraudin

TORY MP TELLS COMMONS HE USES POPPERS

The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has admitted using the party drug 
"poppers", while speaking out in parliament against proposed 
legislation to ban legal highs.

The chair of parliament's foreign affairs select committee was 
speaking during a debate on the government's psychoactive substances 
bill, which seeks to outlaw certain legal recreational drugs. The 
legislation would ban alkyl (or amyl) nitrate  or "poppers"  which 
can be bought in shops.

"There are some times, Madam Deputy Speaker, when something is 
proposed which becomes personal to you and you realise that the 
government is about to do something fantastically stupid and I think 
in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up," said Blunt, who 
has been MP for Reigate since 1997.

"I use poppers. I out myself as a poppers user. And would be directly 
affected by this legislation. And I was astonished to find that it's 
proposed they be banned and, frankly, so were very many gay men."

The draft legislation has been criticised for containing too broad a 
definition of psychoactive substances.

After a short inquiry into the proposed law, the home affairs select 
committee produced a report which concluded that poppers should not 
be banned since, according to the Advisory Council for the Misuse of 
Drugs, their misuse was "not seen to be capable of having harmful 
effects sufficient to constitute a societal problem".
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom